




* 






















NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


WORKS OF 

MARION AMES TAGGART 



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Copyright , 1914 
By The Page Company 

/ill rights reserved 


First Impression, September, 1914 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 
C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U. S. A. 


OCT -5 1914 

©CI.A380725 p 



























































u 


TAIZIE HAD ATTAINED HER DESIRE, AND RAN THE BIG CAR 

herself.” ( See page 223.) 


WITH LOVE 










CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Maizie, Daisy, Taizie and Hazie . . i 

II. The Double Twins Migrate . . . 22 

III. The First Step on the New Path . . 41 

IV. The Coggs Slip into Place . 62 

V. The Quartette Sings “ Home, Sweet 

Home ” 83 

VI. The Honk of the Horn . . . .105 

VII. “A Cup and Saucer Fit ” . . . .127 

VIII. Studying the Customs of the Country . 149 

IX. Failure and Success 169 

X. The Mills Fire 190 

XI. The Coggs That Held . . . .210 

XII. Taizie’s Excessive Success .... 230 

XIII. Rescues 248 

XTV. “ Coggs Sisters, Importers ” 266 

XV. The Herr Doktor 285 

XVI. Second Sight 304 

XVII. Shearing the Palace 323 

XVIII. Sharing the Palace 342 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

“ Taizie had attained her desire, and ran the big 

car herself ( See page 223) . . . Frontispiece 

“ They . . . regarded the stranger with a 

GRAVITY THAT HELD FEAR AND CURIOSITY ” . IO 

“ ‘ I’m GETTING WELL, DEAR TWIN. PLEASE TELL ME 

WHICH ONE YOU ARE! ’ ” 150 

“ He stood silent, scowling horribly ”... 183 

“ Halted close to her, directly in her path ” . 232 

“ ‘ We’ve got you! ’ he cried, catching the man by 

THE COLLAR WITH A FIERCE TWIST ” . . *251 



NANCY AND 
THE COGGS TWINS 


CHAPTER I 

MAIZIE, DAISY, TAIZIE AND HAZIE 

OUR tired girls had come in from 
their day’s work. They were little 
girls, or would have been so labelled 
if they had been coming home from 
school into a real home, with a 
mother in it But because they came home from their 
day’s work they were merely four young girls. 

They looked so much alike that they could not be 
less than sisters, and might have been more; it was 
puzzling how they could be sisters and be all four, 
apparently, the same age. And they managed this by 
actually being more than sisters — they were two pairs 
of twins, Maizie and Daisy, Taizie and Hazie, the 
older pair fifteen, the younger pair, fourteen years old. 

They were not pretty girls, but nobody would have 
minded that, for they were attractive. They had 
1 




2 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


bright reddiish hair that stood up cheerfully around 
their merry faces; round rosy faces they were, with 
large, jolly mouths and strong even white teeth and 
a chronic smile, short straight noses, and blue eyes 
that snapped and danced with the laughter that wrin- 
kled them into fine lines in their corners. 

The older pair wore dark blue dresses of a heavy 
cotton material, the younger pair dark skirts and shirt- 
waists; the older pair worked in a big department 
store, wrapping parcels; the younger pair were er- 
rand girls in the same dressmaking establishment. 
Entirely alone in the world these young creatures were 
earning their living and looking after themselves, as 
unafraid as the sparrows chattering outside their win- 
dow. They had a room in a cheap tenement, which 
they had hired from the tenant of the remaining four 
rooms constituting the flat. It was a dark room, but, 
as Maizie pointed out, that did not matter, because 
they were away all day, except Sunday, and then they 
could “ hang around somewheres.” It was a cheap 
room because it was a dark one, and when there is not 
much money a low rent counts for more than light to 
four young owls who can only see their nest at night. 

The room was sparsely furnished. A table held the 
three-burner gas stove on which the girls cooked what 
little was cooked there. It had to be disconnected 
from the gas to get illumination from it, so there was 
also a lamp. There were four chairs, of sorts; the 


MAIZIE, DAISY, TAIZIE AND HAZIE 3 


beds were two mattresses and bedding, without the 
extravagance of bedsteads. In the morning the girls 
piled one cotton mattress on the other and folded up 
the clothing before going to work, by way of setting 
in order for the empty day while they were gone. 

It was a dreary, not to say ghastly existence for four 
young things in the first two years of the ’teens, yet 
these two pairs of Coggs twins — that was their un- 
musical last name — managed to have bright color, 
laughing eyes and gay spirits on their unwholesome 
fare, badly prepared, and the sound sleep they tumbled 
into on their forbidding beds. But how long this 
lively health and jollity would hold out under such 
conditions was a question. 

“ Hullo ! ” Daisy said, as the younger pair came in, 
half an hour after she and Maizie had returned. 
“ Anything ? ” 

This was the shorthand manner of demanding the 
day’s news. 

“ Say, we’re right in it ! ” announced Taizie. 
“ Haze — ” 

“ I’ll tell my own news ! ” interrupted Hazie. “ Got 
a rise ! What d’you know about that ! ” 

“ Oh, say ! Honest ? ” cried Maizie and Daisy to- 
gether. 

Hazie nodded hard. “ Fifty cents per,” she af- 
firmed. “ Go ahead, Taizie.” 

“ Mine ain’t so much, ’cause it ain’t steady, like 


4 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Hazie’s, but a woman where I took a grand dancing- 
dress home to-day give me a dollar. That ain’t so 
worse, either.” 

“ Well, I just guess not!” cried Maizie, who was 
recognized for some unknown reason as the head of 
the family. “ It makes you get one-third more this 
week than your wages ! ” 

“ How’d you get that so easy?” asked Taizie ad- 
miringly. “ I counted up myself and got that, too, but 
not right off the bat, like you. Sometimes I’m dead 
sure you’ll get rich, Maizie Coggs, you’re that quick ! ” 

“ Say, I guess there’s a streak o’ Coggs luck on tap,” 
said Daisy. “ I found a nickel in a crack in the store 
floor to-day. But I blew it in on one of those fortune 
teller little green birds with a bill on ’em like a hook 
nose. There was a dago woman had ’em on the side- 
walk. And that little green feller walked right along 
— hitched along the stick they sat on — and pulled out 
a card for me. I had to hand it back, but it told on 
it I was going on a journey. And it had a piece on 
it, too. It said : 

“ Keep your heart up and your pluck, 

You are born to wealth and luck ; 

There’s a grand man and a true, 

Who will live and die for you.” 

Daisy recited this bit of choice doggerel with em- 
phasis on all the insignificant words, reducing it to 
sing-song. 


MAIZIE, DAISY, TAIZIE AND HAZIE 5 

“ Great fortune ! ” said Maizie scornfully. “ All 
the wealth that’d give you would be funeral expenses 
for the man. About the best thing you could do 
with that bird’d be to use him for Thanksgiving 
dinner/’ 

“ Well, I’d rather go to the movies than spend five 
cents I found on a bird that didn’t have any more for 
his money than that piece,” added Taizie. “ I bought 
ten cents’ worth of potato salad at the della cattessen 
with ten cents out of my dollar. The man said, being 
it was night and folks had bought supper, he’d give me 
over. And he did. Look at here ; the wooden dish’s 
heaped — fifteen cents’ worth, every bit of it.” 

Taizie produced her contribution to the family well- 
being with triumph, conscious of being a good sister 
in sharing her luck, and of having made a good bar- 
gain. 

The four girls bustled around and got supper. 
Taizie’s potato salad held the position of honor on the 
table. They set the other end of the table, leaving the 
gas stove attached and using the lamp, because they 
were heating water to add to the coffee and to wash 
dishes later on. They economically set away the 
coffee pot with the grounds from breakfast to be used 
again at night. 

For the rest, their supper consisted of bread, soused 
mackerel, a box of small ginger cookies, so hot that 
their ginger must have been mixed with cayenne pep- 


6 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


per, while their surfaces looked like a physical geog- 
raphy map. 

These four girls, who were hardly more than chil- 
dren, earned, between them, fourteen dollars a week, 
but when rent comes out of that, and food and clothing 
for four hard-working, growing girls, there isn’t much 
to spare. There had been one horrible time when 
Hazie was ill and there was nothing saved up. It was 
a time spoken of, even by these irrepressible, jolly 
girls, with lowered voices and quick-coming gloom in 
their laughing eyes. When Hazie was better, and the 
first and worst consequences of her illness survived, 
Maizie had declared that there must be a sick fund 
established, something laid by each week to meet 
emergencies, and the rule had been rigidly adhered to. 
There are not many pennies in fourteen dollars with 
which to do so much, so meals were necessarily frugal. 

They were merry meals, nevertheless. The double 
twins loved one another devotedly. They told one 
another the history of each day, recounted all their 
adventures, burlesqued every one and everything that 
had amused them, sang the latest sonig, if one girl had 
heard a new one, were funny, clever, gay. They had 
such good times that their laughter rang out in the 
gloomy flat, and made their dingy neighbors envious, 
wistful, or happy, according to the dispositions of the 
people hearing the noise in “ the Coggs’ room.” To- 
night it was Taizie who was chief entertainer. It 


MAIZIE, DAISY, TAIZIE AND HAZIE 7 


often was Taizie; if there was one of the double twins 
livelier, better at acting and singing than the others, 
it was this one of the second pair. 

Taizie leaned back in her chair, gesticulating with 
a bread crust. 

“ When we’re rich, just richer’n oil, I’m going to 
have a car like I saw to-day,” she announced. “ It 
was redder’n’ shinier’n a bottle in a drug store, ’nd had 
stripes on it, green stripes with a gold edge to ’em, an’ 
glass 1 Siay, maybe it didn’t shine — brass, too ! ” 

“Well, Taizie Coggs,” protested Hazie. “I saw 
that, too; it’s a cigar thing! I guess I wouldn’t have 
a tobacco car ! I’ll have one of the great long, sneaky 
kind you can’t hear till you’re hit; you hear it going 
by after you’re dead. Mine’ll be dark red, outside, and 
inside cushions just the same color. And I’ll have a 
bonnet all made of flowers sewed on solid, and a veil 
that’ll fly till you’d think it was one end on me and the 
other end over in Brooklyn. And the way I’ll sit up 
and take notice’ll give you a fit. You’ll all be along, 
but if one of you acts as if she cared when we meet 
a circus procession, she’ll be sorry! I ain’t going to 
act ’sif I thought one bit more of that car and riding 
’round with other folks walking than if I was a marble 
bust.” 

“Well, Hazie, what’s got the matter with you?” 
cried Daisy. “ When we say what it’ll be when we’re 
rich we don’t make it like that, not ever ! It’s all fixed 


8 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

that we’re just going to have the biggest time ever, 
and make everybody else have it, too, but we ain’t 
going to do any stiff ramrod acts. I’m going to ride 
along nodding till they’ll all say I’m crazy, just to 
show I ain’t forgetting — ” Daisy ended with a wide 
gesture embracing the entire room. Her sentence 
needed no words to declare what it was she meant to 
remember when she was prosperous. 

“ Oh, I got kind of a jolt to-day,” said Hazie, with 
heightened color. “ There’s a girl at Madame’s thinks 
she’s got first prize in the cattle show. Taizie was 
out; she got smarty-cat. I sort of thought a nifty 
car like that giddy one I saw, spattering a little mud 
on her would be about my size — for a change.” 

Maizie shook her head. “ No good, Hazie,” she 
said kindly. “No good, and no go. It’s straight fun 
for ours, no pickles! When we get rich we’ll take 
her out in our car, but we won’t get grouchy before or 
after. Land, everybody can’t be decent; there’s mil- 
lions, four or five, in New York! I don’t know as I’ll 
have a car. I kind of think maybe I’ll get a moving- 
picture theatre of my own and a merry-go-round and 
look at movies free half the day and go around on the 
horses the other half.” 

It was one of the chief joys of these two sets of 
twins to plan nightly what they would do when they 
were rich. It began to seem to them like a settled fact 
that one day they were to be removed from their pov- 


MAIZIE, DAISY, TAIZIE AND HAZIE 9 

erty and have all the desires of their hearts grati- 
fied. 

“ We’ll practise riding the merry-go-round now,” 
said Taizie. 

Whereupon she turned her chair sidewise to the 
table, mounted it as if it had been a saddled horse, and 
jogged and jarred around the room. With a hoot of 
rapture her own particular twin followed on her chair. 
Maizie and Daisy promptly fell into line and in a mo- 
ment there was a pandemonium of four pairs of 
wooden feet violently striking the floor in alternation 
with four more pairs of wooden feet, all propelled by 
four pairs of human feet which seemed to be a part of 
four riotous young human voices, all shrieking with 
laughter and exploding into meaningless words. 

It was not strange, with all this noise going on, that 
knocking at the door was not heard. It repeated itself 
many times before Hazie cried : 

“ Hark ! I hear something ! ” and the chair steeds 
stood still. 

Then the knock, recognizing the sudden silence as 
intended to give it a chance, fell once more on the 
panel of the dark door. 

“ Houlihan ! ” cried Maizie. It sounded like an ex- 
clamation, but she meant it for- an announcement of 
her next door neighbor. 

“ Come in! ” cried Daisy, getting off her chair; the 
other three twins also stood. 


10 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


To their boundless surprise and consternation the 
door opened and revealed a thin, dark-haired, dark- 
eyed man, irreproachably clad, who removed his hat 
from a head so smooth and glossy that it looked like 
metal, and said to the panting girls : 

“ A're these the Misses Coggs? ” 

“ We’re the Coggs twins, two pairs,” said Maizie 
after a pause, obeying the visible pokes of her sisters 
to make her speak. 

“ I thought so,” said the stranger, blandly uncon- 
scious of the rapid, but useless smoothing which the 
girls were giving their brilliant and tousled hair, the 
blank shock written on their faces. “ Miss Mary 
Coggs, Miss Margaret, the elder twins, if I am not 
mistaken; Miss Teresa and Miss Hazel, the younger, 
I think. If you please, I should like a few words with 
you. I have something that is of the utmost impor- 
tance to you to lay before you.” 

“ Have a chair,” said Daisy, recovering herself to 
a degree. 

The visitor seated himself on Daisy’s steed, now 
restored to its proper office. The four twins also 
seated themselves. As there were but four chairs 
Taizie turned up a box and sat on that. They all 
pulled their skirts down over their knees with pre- 
cisely the same motion, and regarded the stranger with 
a gravity that held fear and curiosity. 

“ Now that I see you more plainly I find that it 



1HEY . . . REGARDED 1HE STRANGER WITH A GRAVITY 
THAT HELD FEAR AND CURIOSITY.” 


j oh<^ 

























MAIZIE, DAISY, TAIZIE AND HAZIE 11 


would be impossible for a stranger to tell you apart; 
not only that, but to decide which was the elder, which 
the younger pair of twins. You are wonderfully 
alike/’ he said. 

“ There’s ways of telling after you’re used to us,” 
said Maizie. “ But we’re awful much alike, I know.” 
She spoke apologetically. 

“ My name is Carberry, Henry Keane Garberry. I 
am a lawyer, and I want you to consider me one of 
your friends, my dears,” the twins’ visitor introduced 
himself. 

The girls pricked up their ears, especially Maizie 
and Taizie. This sounded interesting to all four of 
the girls, but it sounded more than that to Maizie and 
Taizie. Not for nothing had they gone to vaudeville 
theatres in the cheapest seats of the topmost gallery. 
They knew that wildly exciting events in plays began 
in this way, by the coming of a lawyer whom no one 
knew, but who introduced himself in words similar to 
those used by Mr. Carberry. 

None of the girls spoke or moved; they sat regard- 
ing their caller with alert and strained attention, lis- 
tening for what he should say next with much the air 
with which a cat listens at a mouse’s hole. 

“ My dear twice-told twins, if I may so call you, 
what do you know about your mother?” Mr. Car- 
berry asked. “ What was her name before she mar- 
ried?” 


12 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


All four tawny heads shook at once. Maizie replied 
for them all. 

“We don’t know what her name was. We don’t 
know hardly anything about her. She died when that 
pair was fourteen months old, couldn’t walk yet, and 
we was just a little more’n two, Daisy and me. So we 
don’t know who she was. Our father died when that 
pair of twins wias two months old. His name wais 
Coggs. We was taken to be raised by a woman. She 
was poor, but she took all of us, meanin’ to raise us to 
work. She died two years ago, so all she got out of 
it was the bother. She wasn’t so bad ; we was sorry 
she died on us, but we got along.” Maizie told this 
brief history calmly, indicating the younger pair of 
twins with a nod at them when they appeared in it. 

“ And how it happened that the Society for the Pro- 
tection of Children did not get hold of you and put 
you into the proper hands to complete your bringing 
up, is a mystery ! ” exclaimed Mr. Carberry. 

“ Well, we didn’t mean they should,” cried Maizie. 
“ A woman — she hires this flat — said she’d look 
after us; I guess the Society wasn’t on. Say, you 
belong to it ? ” Maizie broke ofif with a look of 
terror which was reflected on the three other twin 
faces. 

“ And if I did, what then? ” asked Mr. Carberry. 

“ Oh, for goodness’ sake ! When we’ve got along 
good so far, don’t, oh, please, please don’t butt in and 


MAIZIE, DAISY, TAIZIE AND HAZIE 13 


send us off into ’sylums, shut us up ! We’re all right, 
honest to goodness, we are ! ” cried Maizie in a 
panic. 

“Yes, honest to goodness, we’re getting on fine! ” 
echoed Taizie, with equal appeal. 

“ Don’t be alarmed, double twins,” laughed Mr. 
Carberry. “ I am not an agent for the Society; I am 
not even a member of it. I came here to-night to tell 
you that your mother was Mary Margaret Debbs be- 
fore she married William Coggs, who was an English- 
man and your father.” 

“ Then she named the first pair after her. Haw’d 
you find out? ” cried Taizie. 

“ I am a lawyer, and it is part of a lawyer’s practice 
to find out facts of this sort. A trifle that came to 
light in connection with other business gave me the 
first clue to your parentage. Since then I have fol- 
lowed up the clue and worked it out to complete and 
important results. Your mother’s father is old Peter 
Debbs, who owns large, prosperous mills at Chagford 
Falls, Massachusetts. He is immensely wealthy, at 
least twice over a millionaire; he is childless, your 
mother was the only child he had that lived to grow 
up. He was a poor man when she was about your 
present age and she left home to earn her living, mar- 
ried and was lost to him. He never knew what had 
become of her. My efforts have given me these facts. 
I have been working on the case for months; it is 


14 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


complete now, and it is time that you were told that 
your grandfather is found and is a man of great 
wealth.” Mr. Carberry told this amazing story with- 
out enlarging upon its plot; indeed the mere facts 
were so stunning that he could not have heightened 
their effect. He closely watched the four young faces 
before him to see their expression when his story had 
filtered into the double twins’ consciousness. 

Maizie, Daisy, Taizie and Hazie turned fiery red 
with a flush that ran up into their tawny, frowzy hair 
and seemed to increase its reddishness. 

Taizie deliberately arose and executed a walk- 
around in a small circle before her chair, head on one 
side, her face absurdly grave. Then she sat down 
again. 

“ Well, what — do — you — know — about — 
that ! ” exclaimed Daisy in a stunned way. 

“ Are we — what d’you call ’ems? Tl?e folks that 
come in for money? ” asked Hazie. 

“ Yes, that’s it ! ” Maizie said. “ Does this old man 
who’s rich somewhere know about us ? Do we — are 
we in it? What’s next? Anything doing for the 
Coggs twins ? ” 

Mr. Carberry saw the anxiety in her face, heard it 
in her voice, recognized that her questions sounded 
flippant only because she did not know how to ask 
them in any other than slang terms. They represented 
Marzie’s sense of responsibility, and a dawning reali- 


MAIZIE, DAISY, TAIZIE AND HAZIE 15 


zation that something might be expected of these fan- 
tastic twins as heirs to great wealth. 

“ Your grandfather, Peter Debbs, has been seen, 
Miss Maizie,” Mr. Carberry replied. “ I am obliged 
to tell you that he has not been enthusiastically pleased 
to hear that he had grandchildren. The proofs laid 
before him are enough to convince any man, but he is 
slow to admit them. You see, Mr. Debbs lacks educa- 
tion and is old. People of that sort are hard to move.” 

“ Most folks are,” said Daisy, with the wisdom 
born of experience far beyond her years. “ Most 
everybody is as stuffy as a stone when you first try 
to make ’em do anything.” 

“ That is often true,” agreed Mr. Carberry politely. 
“ At any rate, your grandfather is what is called ‘ set 
in his ways.’ He has to have time to accept the sur- 
prising news of your existence. He is supposed to be 
looking into the proofs which I have laid before him. 
There is no getting away from them. You certainly 
are his grandchildren, and, sooner or later, he must 
acknowledge you.” 

“ If he does a-college us, or whatever you said, what 
happens next?” demanded Maizie. 

“ I think there is no doubt that he will be persuaded 
to settle upon you a considerable sum of money, in 
order to allow you to live, and be fitted to live, in a 
manner suitable to four young ladies who will be the 
heirs to immense wealth,” said Mr. Carberry. “ Mr. 


16 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Debbs does not strike me as a generous, nor an affec- 
tionate person, but, I fancy, he has a sense of justice. 
If not, public opinion, if not the law, would compel 
him to provide properly for the children of his sole 
child, the only creatures of his own blood now living.” 

“ Gee ! ” exclaimed Taizie under her breath, not 
flippantly, nor slangily, but in a fervent way, as if the 
syllable were almost a prayer. 

“ Every word you say is dead easy, but it kind of 
goes along so smooth that it’s hard understanding/’ 
said Maizie candidly. “You mean that we’ll get 
enough to keep us till this man — grandfather — dies ? 
Not that I want him to die; I’m just asking.” 

“ Enough to live on and to be educated, so that 
when all Mr. Debbs’ wealth comes to you, you’ll be 
ready to use it,” said Mr. Carberry. 

“ Oh, say ! ” cried Daisy, too stirred for further 
utterance. 

“ I’d like to know if you ever heard the like ? ” de- 
manded Taizie, growing dangerously purple, from 
emotion. “ Most every night we say what’ll happen 
when we get rich and here’s you, coming here — 
What’d we have for supper, girls? Would you mind 
setting that alarm clock upside down, so when you’re 
gone we’ll know you was here and we didn’t fall asleep 
and dream you, Mr. Carb? ” 

“ I’d like to know how we could dream a Peter 
Debbs and a — something — Falls we never heard of, 


MAIZIE, DAISY, TAIZIE AND HAZIE 17 

Taizie?” demanded Hazie, as Mr. Carberry laugh- 
ingly did as Taizie requested and reversed the clock. 

“ Then what do we do now ? ” asked Maizie. 

“ I think it would be well for you to go to Chag- 
ford Falls, to be there, near your grandfather,” said 
Mr. Carberry, resuming his seat after he had stood the 
clock on its folded-down top ring. “ It would be con- 
venient to have you at hand when he is ready to ac- 
knowledge you. If he were not willing to do so, it 
would be best to have you there, on the other hand, to 
bring the weight of public opinion on him by letting 
his own townspeople know his granddaughters.” 

“Is it far?” asked Maizie. “And how’d we live 
there while we was waiting? We’ve got work here.” 

“ The journey takes about five hours by train. It 
was my idea that you should get employment in the 
mills at Chagford Falls while the matter was hanging. 
I am glad to see that you are prudent, Miss Maizie, 
though you are so young, and evidently impulsive,” 
said Mr. Carberry kindly. 

“ Maybe they wouldn’t give us a job,” suggested 
Hazie. 

“ They would, though,” returned Mr. Carberry. “ I 
have made sure of that. The overseer is ready to take 
you on, all four of you, when you appear. When 
could you go ? ” 

“ Well, we couldn’t walk off and not give the people 
we work for a chance,” said Maizie. “ Of course 


18 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


there’s dead loads of girls ready to jump in, but you’ve 
got to get ’em. We could start Monday, I s’pose. We 
don’t get a chance to save up much. What’s it cost 
to go? Should we sel'l our stuff?” Maizie made a 
gesture toward the almost bare room. 

“ I think it would be wise,” said Mr. Carberry with- 
out a smile. “If you please, I will lend you the money 
for your journey; you may return it when you can.” 

“ Thank you,” said Maizie doubtfully. “ Say — 
I’ve got to find out, you know — what’s in this for 
you? Will you get paid for finding us — or what? ” 

Mr. Carberry looked smilingly at this young crea- 
ture of fifteen whose knowledge of life made her know 
that he could not be acting from entirely disinterested 
motives. 

“ You are right to find out, Miss Maizie,” he re- 
plied. “ I shall get back all and more than I lend you. 
I shall be paid for finding you, yes. I expect to make 
a nice sum for my work, so you need not be afraid 
that I am too good to be true. It is entirely in the 
way of business, as to my part of it, though I am sin- 
cerely glad to set four such brave, pleasant little girls 
on the road to luck.” 

This answer satisfied Maizie. She drew a long 
breath of relief. 

“ That’s good,” she said frankly. “ I guess you 
took hold of us something like a ticket in a raffle. If 
it draws, all right; if you lose, grin and bear it! 


MAIZIE, DAISY, TAIZIE AND HAZIE 19 


That’s straight, and now I don’t mind standing in with 
you. I kinder hate charity, and I wouldn’t of liked 
you to do work hunting us up if you wouldn’t get a 
good bit for it. I guess it’s a go, is it, girls ? ” 

“ Sure,” said Taizie. “ If we all get a job in the 
mills down there, wherever ’tis, we’ll get on. I’d like 
to go travelling. We never went anywheres further’n 
the Bronx, and you go there on a trolley, not a train,” 
she added, explaining to Mr. Carberry. 

“ Besides, it’s spring, and it would be kinder swell 
to go off to the country,” said Hazie. “ Is it coun- 
try?” 

“ Chagford Falls is a small town; it is country in 
comparison to New York, yes,” said Mr. Carberry. 
“There is one more twin to be heard from?” He 
looked at Daisy. 

“ Well,” began Daisy slowly. “ New York’s good 
enough for me, and that’s the truth. But you don’t 
get so awful much of the good-enough when you 
hustle out every morning to work and tie up bundles 
all day, with a bottle light hanging over your nose, 
and hustle back here at night to eat and go to bed. I 
say, let’s gamble on this grandfather and risk going 
where you send us, though we don’t know you, and 
maybe you’re sending us off to a frankforter fac- 
tory, to get ground up, instead of to some mills to 
work.” 

“ Daise ! ” cried Maizie, somewhat shocked. 


20 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ That’s all right, Miss Maizie. I don’t in the 
least mind your twin’s frankness,” laughed Mr. Car- 
berry. “ My dear little girl, I have a daughter nearly 
as old — or as young ! — as you. I would not send 
you into danger; you will not find the * frankforter 
factory ’ where the mills should be ! At the worst, you 
would be better off in Chagford Falls than here in this 
darkness and hard work for small pay. But I think 
that there is no doubt that in a short time you are to 
be wrapped in luxury and find the wildest dreams you 
ever dreamed come true. You are going-to be healthy, 
wealthy and wise in no time! Healthy and wise you 
are now, sound, rosy girls, with keen wits and com- 
mon sense, I’m glad to discover. And old Peter Debbs’ 
grandchildren will be wealthy. So take this step in 
the dark without fear but that it will lead straight out 
into sunshine.” 

Mr. Carberry arose as he spoke and shook hands 
with each of the double twins in turn. “ I’ll attend 
to the arrangements for your journey; I’ll see you 
again,” he said. 

The two pairs of twins bade him good-by with un- 
wonted seriousness on their short, rosy faces. 

For a moment after he had gone they remained si- 
lently and soberly regarding one another. Then Tai- 
zie emitted a whoop that might almost have reached 
the ears of Peter Debbs in Chagford Falls, Massachu- 
setts. 


MAIZIE, DAISY, TAIZIE AND HAZIE 21 


“ Rich ! Us rich ! Oh, clams, and shoot the chutes ! 
What do you know about that! ” she cried. 

The four girls tore their folded bedolothing from its 
retirement and draped themselves in it. Then they 
executed a dance that would have done honor to the 
red men whom the Dutch found on Manhattan Island, 
uttering shrieks of wild excitement and leaping and 
whirling until they tumbled, exhausted but rapturous, 
in a fourfold heap of streaming ruddy hair and steam- 
ing ruddy faces in the middle of the floor. Thus these 
four young things resolved to meet their fate and to 
go out into the unknown with all the confidence, and 
no more knowledge, than young chickens have when 
bursting their shells. 


CHAPTER II 


THE DOUBLE TWINS MIGRATE 

IT’S give ’em away! ” cried Daisy 
Goggs. “ What’s the use of selling 
such a little? We’ll give our bed- 
clothes and the beds to Mrs. Flynn 
up-stairs, because she has such a 
lot of children. And our gas stove to Mrs. Houlihan, 
and our chairs to Mrs. Cohen. The dishes — there 
ain’t many! I’d sorter like to smash them after 
we’ve eat our last meal, so’s we could have a noise for 
a send-off.” 

“ Well, I guess we won’t smash that plate with the 
ihorse on it we got with the coupons, Daisy Coggs ! ” 
cried her outraged twin. “ We’re going to move that 
with us, and the cup we — Hazie, wasn’t it ? — drew 
in the grab-bag that time they had a fair at St. Philip’s 
and the priest stood us for a grab a-piece. I’m going 
to pack up whatever we’ve got nice like that; the 
poppies on that oup are great! One of us can carry 
the box. It would be kinder nice when we get ’way 
off in a strange place, like Chagford Falls, to see some- 
thing we’d eat offen at home.” 

22 



THE DOUBLE TWINS MIGRATE 23 


Mr. Carberry had been as good as his word, better, 
in fact. Not only had he made all the arrangements 
for the double twins’ departure and had “ seen them 
again,” as he had promised, to explain to them their 
way of going, but he had offered to come for them 
and put them on the train when they started. This 
was a great relief to these girls to whom the Grand 
Central Station seemed like a monster, waiting to en- 
gulf them, likely to start them in any direction save 
the one in which they desired to go. 

Mr. Carberry had shown them their tickets, four 
impressive bits of cardboard, but he had kept them, at 
Maizie’s request, who feared they might be stolen 
from them if they were left in the room when the 
twins were all out. 

The migration began to seem real to the double 
twins, to come out of the dreamlike wonder in which 
the three days had passed since they had learned 
that they had a grandfather and stand out as a 
reality. 

Taizie and Hazie had been pleased to find their 
employer, the Fifth Avenue dressmaker with the 
French name and the Irish face, kindly regretful that 
the two trusty, good-natured little girls were to leave 
her. She was interested in their future. 

“ When you get to be grand ladies with a fortune, 
come* back and let me make you some splendid cos- 
tumes, girls,” she said. “ Sure, I’ll be after makin’ 


24 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


’urn the best I know, for old sakes’ sake, or me name 
isn’t Celeste Daupin, modiste.” 

Taizie and Hazie were unable to reply, even to thank 
her, being rendered absolutely speechless by the vision 
of that possible future in which the errand girls might 
return, the customers of this impressive establish- 
ment. 

Then “ Celeste Daupin, modiste,” had made a part- 
ing present to the girls of a bill that equalled one 
week’s earning by the pair and they departed, subdued, 
a little frightened, but rejoicing. 

Maizie and Daisy were such an insignificant part 
of a vast machine-like department store that their go- 
ing out of it called forth no consciousness of their 
existence from the heads. But their fellow- workers 
wished them well, and were sorry to see the last of 
them, while they were uncertain whether or not to 
believe the unlikely story that the girls told as the 
reason for their going. 

The ruddy-haired twins were so obliging, so merry, 
so much above small meannesses and jealousies that 
their store-mates loved them, and truly said that they 
did not expect to find them replaced by their succes- 
sors. 

Thus all the small affairs of the double Coggs twins’ 
old world were set in order, and the day dawned on 
which they were to go out into a new world and a 
greatly changed state of things. 


THE DOUBLE TWINS MIGRATE 25 


Mr. Carberry appeared at the door and found the 
twins waiting. They were all four dressed in their 
working frocks, for that was all they had to wear in 
the street. Their jackets were short, their hats plain 
sailors of dark straw, with only a band around them, 
like a boy’s hat. The twins struck Mr. Carberry as 
younger and more pathetic than ever before, as they 
sat clutching their slender earthly belongings, tied up 
in brown paper packages, with anxious excitement 
written on their flushed faces. The twins were so 
self-reliant, usually so jolly, that their unprotected 
condition hardly seemed pathetic, but to-day, for the 
first time, Mr. Carberry realized fully how narrowly 
this quartette escaped being children, going out in the 
world alone, like the babes in the wood. 

“Ready? That’s good!” he said heartily. “Let 
me take some of your belongings down. I have a cab 
at the door.” 

“My land!” cried Hazie. “We never rode in a 
cab but just once, when the woman that took us died 
and we went to her funeral, and we couldn’t really 
enjoy the cab then, ’cause we was sorry she died.” 

“ I guess we’ll ketch the train, with a cab,” said 
Taizie, betraying her dread of losing it 

They disposed themselves in the cab rapturously. 
There was no one to see them off. Mrs. Cohen, from 
whom they had rented their room, had bade them a 
kind, but indifferent good-by up-stairs, being hurried 


26 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


with her Passover cleaning. In a neighborhood like 
the one that had sheltered the Coggs twins the pass- 
ing of four young girls makes little more difference 
than the passing of the four wheels of an unknown 
wagon rolling by. 

The girls leaned forward as they started, putting 
their heads as far out of the cab windows as their hats 
allowed. 

Turning the corner of the stifling street Mai^ie 
leaned back and brushed her eyes with the back of her 
hand, boyishly, and caught her breath in a nervous 
laugh. 

“ Well, that’s done,” she exclaimed. “ ’Tain’t much 
to be sorry for, but you kinder get used to the only 
place you know about.” 

In a moment the four twins were enjoying their 
drive to the utmost, making fun of themselves and of 
all they passed, in true Coggs fashion. 

“ I have not bought seats in the Pullman for you, 
children,” said Mr. Carberry. “ You’ll be comfortable 
in the common car.” 

“Well, I guess!” cried Taizie, almost too excited 
to speak. “ Our chairs wasn’t so good as car seats ; 
you know that, ’cause you sat on ’em.” 

Mr. Carberry laughed and helped the girls into the 
car, turned over a seat for them and disposed of their 
packages. 

“ Here are your tickets,” he said, handing them to 


THE DOUBLE TWINS MIGRATE 27 


Maizie. “ You will not give them up, they will only 
be punched by the conductor, till you are near your 
journey’s end. If you get hungry there is a dining- 
car ahead; go through to it and have a lunch. Don’t 
leave the train till you get to Ghagford. There are 
several parts, several townships in Chagford, Chag- 
ford Falls, North Chagford and I don’t know what 
else! Chagford is the station for them all, at least 
the main one. You get out there. There is a trolley 
over to Chagford Falls ; take that and go to the mills. 
Ask for Mr. Dermot, the overseer, tell him who you 
are, that I sent you, and that is all you will have to 
do. He will send you somewhere to a suitable board- 
ing place and to-morrow you will begin to work. In 
a few days, or a few weeks at most, your grandfather 
will have acknowledged you and provided for you and 
the band will play for you that old air, played when 
Cornwallis surrendered : ‘ The World Turned Upside 
Down ! ’ I shall go to Chagford when this happens, 
so shall see you again. Good-by, double twins ! Good 
luck to you! Take care of yourselves, be careful 
what friendships you make, especially after you are 
wealthy. That will be the time when worthless human 
beings will seek you out, like birds of prey! Have 
you the twenty-five dollars I lent you, safe, Miss 
Maizie? ” 

“ Yes, sir,” said Maizie, with a quick movement 
toward the line where her stocking top must be. “ It’s 


28 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


too much; we don’t need money. Did you make out 
what you lent us, all of it? ” 

“ You must not start off without any money, my 
dear,” said Mr. Carberry. “ Yes, I made a memoran- 
dum of what I had spent for you; here it is. The 
cab is my treat! What a particular little lady you 
are ! ” 

“ Well, we’ve got to pay it back. If we get rich, 
it’ll be quick and easy. If we stay poor we’ve got to 
save up and earn it, but we’ll get there in the end,” said 
Maizie earnestly. “ Good-by, and we’re awful much 
obliged, honest to goodness, we are ! Even if you did 
pick us up like a ticket to a turkey raffle, to see if 
there’d be anything in it, you’ve been awful nice to 
us, and we ain’t going to forget it.” 

“ No; that’s right! We ain’t,” the other three con- 
firmed her. 

“ Why, my dear, droll young persons, no one could 
help liking you and being interested in you ! ” said 
Mr. Carberry heartily, shaking hands and taking leave, 
as the jerk of the train announced that the engine was 
coupled to it. 

No words could describe the joys and the marvels 
of that journey to Chagford! Though it took six 
hours, and not five, it was not a moment too long. 
The double twins frugally abstained from lunching in 
the dining-car; they had thoughtfully provided them- 
selves with crackers and cheese and some cold meat 


THE DOUBLE TWINS MIGRATE 29 


sandwiches. Buying a little fruit and a box of broken 
candy apiece from the boy who vended them on the 
train was more economical than a meal served in the 
dining-car. Besides, they all doubted their ability to 
go to the car, order the meal, or to eat it there, should 
they venture on the extravagance. 

Happily they devoured the flying pictures from the 
car windows, varying the monotony by taking turns 
in riding backward in the reversed seat, to try how the 
world looked receding from them, instead of coming 
toward them. 

It was Daisy who made a discovery. 

“ Say, girls/’ she announced, “ this railroad ticket 
throws in a movie ! ” She pointed to the platform of 
a small station past which they flew without stopping 
and at the people congregated there to see the New 
York express go through. 

“ Yes, but the plays are mostly acted out by cows,” 
giggled Taizie, as a meadow occupied by browsing 
Jerseys succeeded the station and the platform group. 

It was spring, early spring in all its soft tints. The 
twins had never before seen so much of it in one wide 
stretch of loveliness, never had seen more of spring 
than was revealed by Central Park when a pleasant 
Sunday allowed them to go there. 

Daisy struggled with her sense of its magic. Fi- 
nally she said: 

“ Ain’t it funny how pretty real homely things are 


30 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


out here? Looks kind of everyway, just like pitchers 
you see in books, all kind of soft and — and not real ! 
Look at that old barn with a pill sign painted on it! 
Ain’t it nice, with the green? ” 

“ It sure is,” Maizie answered her twin emphatically. 
“ Makes you feel all I-don’t-know-how inside of 
you!” 

Chagford is prettier seen from the train than the 
average town. As a rule, towns do not reveal their 
true selves to travellers, but rather show draggled 
ravellings of the materials from which they are made. 
As the train comes into Chagford the windings of the 
track give glimpses of the river and of peaceful 
streets; from first acquaintance Chagford is a lovable 
place. 

The double twins dismounted upon the platform of 
the station, one behind the other, somewhat frowzy, 
decidedly flushed and — for them — timid. 

The old man who pushed the baggage truck from 
the baggage-car at the front of the train to the bag- 
gage-room at the rear of the platform, was fond of 
telling, when the Coggs twins were famous in the 
countryside, how his had been first of Chagford eyes 
to see them and how amazed he had felt to see a suc- 
cession of four girls, all precisely alike in looks, 
height, apparent age, descending, one after the other, 
down the car steps upon Chagford. 

Outside the station the Chagford Falls trolley-car 


THE DOUBLE TWINS MIGRATE 31 


was waiting. Maizie led the way to it and boarded 
it, with her three sisters following, not betraying the 
nervousness she felt. 

The trolley bounced and bounded along, stopping 
seldom, through the pleasant highway that led to the 
Falls. The girls scarcely spoke to one another as they 
rode, but sat erect, bright-eyed, missing nothing of 
their new surroundings and liking them greatly. At 
a long, three-story building that covered, at least, the 
length of a city block, the car stopped. The conductor 
thrust his head into the door and pointedly announced : 
“ Ohagford Mills ! ” looking hard at the double twins. 
Maizie had asked him to let them know when they 
reached this point. 

The four girls hastily gathered up their belongings 
and trooped out upon the sidewalk. It was a little 
past five o’clock and the mills were brilliant with the 
low sunshine reflected by the many window panes. 

“ My, but it’s long ! ” ejaculated Hazie. “ Where’d 
you s’pose you go in ? ” 

“ Where’t says ‘ office,’ of course,” replied Maizie, 
putting on a bold front and going up to the door. 

Opening it, she found that it led directly from the 
street into a square room, light and clean, but simple, 
wainscoted high with grained wood of a yellowish 
color, furnished in yellow oak, with no attempt at 
beauty. The only person in sight was a boy, who 
dropped his chair upon its four legs in letting his own 


32 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


feet fall from the window sill, and sat erect, staring 
at the repeated apparition of one and then another, 
to the fourth girl with reddish hair under a sailor hat 
and a jolly, reddened face. 

“ Got ’em again, Tommy Giddings ! ” he exclaimed, 
taking himself by both ears and shaking his own head 
violently from side to side. “ I knew you’d end bad 
if you didn’t reform!” 

“ Is Mr. Dermot in?” asked Maizie, trying not to 
laugh. 

For answer this remarkable office boy walked 
around the double twins and gingerly touched Taizie’s 
sleeve. 

“ You ain’t real, are you? ” he asked. “ What are 
you, anyhow? An Uncle Tom’s Cabin Company, or 
what? Four alike’s too many, two too many, too! 
A pair alike’s about as many as anybody can believe 
in! Straight goods, what are you, honest? This 
gets me!” 

“ We want to see Mr. Dermot,” persisted Maizie, 
checking Taizie and Hazie, who had gone off into con- 
vulsions of laughter. “ You wait long enough and 
you’ll find out what we are! But you tell me now 
where Mr. Dermot is.” 

“ He’s around,” said Tommy Giddings, nodding his 
head in the general direction of the rest of the world. 
“Want I should fetch him? Poor old Dermot! I’ll 
bet he’ll fall down in a fit, and he’s got a wife and 


THE DOUBLE TWINS MIGRATE 33 


children! I’d better get him ready to see you; I’d 
hate like ginger to help carry him home on a stretcher 
and tell Mrs. Dermot he saw four girls all alike and 
knew it was a sign, so gave up right off.” 

“ You go get Mr. Dermot,” cried Maizie, giving 
up trying to keep a serious face. “ You’re a great 
office boy ! It’s your business to call Mr. Dermot and 
make no fuss if the whole Hippodrome comes in from 
New York.” 

“ A Hippodrome isn’t in it with four girls, all ex- 
actly alike, who ain’t supposed to be a show,” retorted 
Tommy Giddings, but with this remark he vanished. 

“ He’s coming in a minute,” said Tommy Giddings, 
returning. “ He says he’ll bet you’re the Coggs twins. 
Are you? And how oomes it there are four to a pair 
in twins where you hail from?” 

“ Two pairs, you silly!” cried Taizie. “It just 
happened we all look alike and are only a year apart.” 

“ Well, I must say it’s pretty hard on other folks, 
’specially when you come on ’em suddenly and they 
are feeble-minded at best,” said Tommy with a grin. 

“That’s you!” cried Taizie in high delight over 
this boy after her own heart, who was also about the 
double twins’ average age. 

Mr. Dermot came into the office, a tall man, some- 
what formidable to look at, but the girls saw that 
Tommy did not fear him, so were reassured. 

“ Are you the Coggs twins, the double twins, Mr. 


34 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Debbs’ grandchildren ? ” asked Mr. Dermot, holding 
out his hand, while Tommy stared, open-mouthed, at 
this amazing speech. 

“ I guess he hasn’t decided to let us be grandchil- 
dren yet,” said Taizie, giving her hand to Mr. Der- 
mot, because she was nearest him and he seemed to 
expect it. “ We’re the Coggs twins all right. Mr. 
Carberry told us we had to come here.” 

“ I know; I was expecting you,” said Mr. Der- 
mot. “ I am going to employ you in the mill, I be- 
lieve. It is sure not to be for long. Come to-morrow 
morning and I will put you to work. In the mean- 
time you must have lodgings. I can send you to a 
respectable boarding-house where you can board 
comfortably.” 

“ How much?” inquired Daisy. 

“ Board ? Five dollars a week, two in a room. 
You will not earn that, for I must put you on begin- 
ners’ wages, but you have other funds?” suggested 
Mr. Dermot. 

“ Not us! ” cried Maizie. “ We’ve got to live just 
as if there wasn’t any Peter Debbs. ’S far’s we know 
there ain’t, either, even if he is our grandfather. And 
if he wasn’t to turn out to be, we’d look nice boarding 
for more’n we could pay ! Can’t we get a room some- 
where and feed ourselves? That’s what we did in 
New York.” 

“ I congratulate you, Miss Coggs, on your sense,” 


THE DOUBLE TWINS MIGRATE 35 


said Mr. Dermot. “ How about your aunt, Tommy? 
Would she have a room for these girls?” 

“ Dandy one,” said Tommy, rallying somewhat 
from the complete prostration into which the conver- 
sation and the discovery he had made in regard to 
these four girls had thrown him. “ She’s got a good 
room, big and light, and she’ll rent it for two-fifty. 
There’s gas in it; they can cook.” 

“ Take the Misses Coggs around there, Thomas. 
Explain to your aunt that they are almost certainly 
Mr. Debbs’ grandchildren, but that till the proofs are 
established they are to work in the mills. Ask her to 
befriend them, to make them comfortable, for they 
don’t know any one here, and I’ve no doubt she’ll 
never be sorry for it. I’ll excuse you for the half 
hour left of to-day,” said Mr. Dermot. “ Good night, 
young ladies. Hope you’ll get on all right. Report 
at seven for work, please. We are obliged to dock 
late hands, fine them, you know.” 

“ Good-by, sir ; we’re not the late kind,” said 
Maizie turning to go, with her duplicates on her heels. 

Tommy Giddings took his cap from its nail and 
followed after. 

“ I’ll bet the fellows I know will rub this in, if they 
see me out with you,” he said. “ I can hear them 
asking whether I buy girls wholesale nowadays, and 
whether I don’t order more’n one pattern.” 

“ You can walk on the other side of the street, if 


36 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


you’d rather,” said Maizie with dignity. “ And you 
can turn into the house alone; we’ll keep our eye on 
you and come in later.” 

“Nixie, nit, not on your life!” affirmed Tommy. 
“ This is good enough to be worth some joshing. It 
gets me! Honest truth, are you old Peter Debbs’ 
granddaughters ? ” 

“ Gracious, we don’t know ! ” cried Maizie. “ The 
lawyer says we are. I s’pose we are ; we must of had 
some grandfather. The lawyer hunted it up and he 
says it’s a go. But this Peter Debbs is kinder brood- 
ing on it before he gives in.” 

“He’s got some money!” observed Tommy. 
“ Maybe you’ll cut a wide swath some day.” 

“ Well, now, you watch us l ” declared Maizie. 
“We’ve got it all planned out; we’ve been so poor 
we couldn’t of been worse, and if ever we get rich 
we’re going to wear all the silks and satins and dia- 
monds we can hang on, and we’re going to have about 
as dandy a time as four girls ever had in this world ! ” 

“ Ask me to supper? ” hinted Tommy. 

“I guess!” laughed Maizie. “We’re going to 
spread it out all over everybody we know. We’re 
going to have the kind of good time that will spread 
out all over everybody.” 

“ You’re a pretty good sort, whoever your grand- 
father is! ” said Tommy approvingly. “ Here’s where 
my aunt lives.” 


THE DOUBLE TWINS MIGRATE 37 


They turned into a house that sat somewhat back 
from the street, approaching the door by a narrow 
walk through a small yard. 

Tommy’s aunt proved to be his Aunt Elona Deacon, 
a widow of a melancholy cast of countenance and 
melancholy manner, whose forlorn ways led Taizie 
honestly to mistake her peculiar first name for 
“ Aloner,” and to think that it was given her because 
she was solitary. 

After Mrs. Deacon had rallied from the shock of 
four girls alike, double twins, applying for her room, 
and from the greater shock of the probability that 
they were Peter Debbs’ grandchildren sufficiently to 
allow her to take up the real point at issue, she proved 
entirely ready to rent the sisters her room at the rea- 
sonable rate quoted by Tommy and to arrange for their 
use of the gas at a sum that was fair. Since the girls 
had nowhere to go, they were installed at once, and 
Mrs. Deacon invited them to tea that first night, as it 
was too late for them to market for themselves. She 
graciously gave Tommy permission to stay, if he liked, 
though she told the girls that “ Tommy was a trial, 
and how her own sister ever had such a boy she, for 
one, could not tell.” The girls were quite able to see 
that these remarks were the thin disguise of his aunt’s 
proud affection for Tommy. 

It was a merry supper. The double twins helped 
to get it, Tommy peeled potatoes, and talk was rapid. 


38 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Mrs. Deacon was eager to hear the story of the Coggs 
girls’ short life, they were ready to tell it, and it struck 
both the aunt and Tommy as a new wonder of the 
world that these four young things had battled alone 
with poverty and made their humble way in New 
York, that monster city which, to Mrs. Deacon’s 
mind, was a sort of ogre, crunching the bones of 
the young and innocent upon which, in a sense, it lived. 

“ Oh, we got along good! ” cried Taizie, when Mrs. 
Deacon gasped over an especially impressive descrip- 
tion which Daisy gave of their dark room, their slen- 
der fare, their funny make-shifts for furniture and 
comfort. “ Girls, does it seem’s if we could have 
been in that very room when we woke up this morn- 
ing, this very same morning, and this the night of it? ” 

“ It sure does not! ” cried Daisy emphatically. “ I 
don’t care if Peter Debbs isn’t a grandfather, we’ve 
got it a lot better here than we had there.” 

Mrs. Deacon looked pleased at this speech. 

“ I’ll try to have you comfortable here ; I don’t want 
you should lack anything within reason,” she said. 
“ Tommy’s got to help me put up another bed in your 
room, then it’ll be ready for you. You’d better get 
to sleep early, for you’ve had quite a day.” 

“ Pretty good to be hiring a furnished room, ain’t 
it?” suggested Taizie when, supper over, the second 
bed set up, Tommy gone, the double twins were left 
to themselves in their new room for the night. 


THE DOUBLE TWINS MIGRATE 39 


“ Well, didn’t you think you’d fall over when she 
said she must put up another bed in here ? ” asked 
Daisy. “ Two bedsteads, springs on both of ’em, and 
us used to a mattress a-piece and that’s all 1 We’re 
getting ready to be rich, getting used to fine things 
by inches.” 

“ I’d tumble to ’em easy, however they happened 
along,” said Hazie, illustrating her remark by a tum- 
ble into one of the beds and supplementing it with 
an “ Oh ! ” of satisfaction when it proved to be com- 
fortable. 

“ What d’you s’pose beginners’ wages is that Mr. 
Dermot said he’d give us? Maybe, if we don’t turn 
out Debbs grandchildren, we can’t afford to stay 
here,” said Maizie. 

“ Sure, we’re Debbs grandchildren all right ! Can’t 
you feel it ? Coggs and Debbs — short names and 
doubled up letters at the end — do you spell Debbs 
with double b? Kinder goes with Coggs. We’re 
them all right. If we ain’t, we’re something else 
lucky. Get into bed, Maizie, so you’ll wake up in time 
to find out what ’tis,” said Taizie, following her twin. 

Maizie laughed, and put out the light. The younger 
twins heard her sigh of contentment as she stretched 
her weary young body out in the comfortable bed in 
which Daisy was already silently luxuriating. 

All four felt the strongest conviction that Taizie was 
right, and that if they were not this unknown Peter 


40 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Debbs’ grandchildren, the heirs of millions, still they 
were the lucky Goggs twins and nothing would ever 
go seriously amiss with them. It was like them to 
ignore their past and present poverty as not worth 
counting a thing amiss. They were so jolly and easily 
pleased, so trusting of the future, that it did not seem 
likely that anything bad could await them. 


CHAPTER III 

THE FIRST STEP ON THE NEW PATH 

HE double twins presented them- 
selves at the mill entrance the 
next morning twenty minutes 
ahead of time. Like the oys- 
ters, “ their clothes were brushed, 
their faces washed, their shoes were clean and 
neat.” 

“ We’ve got to be early,” Maizie had said, “ be- 
cause some one’s got to put us wise to the work, and 
it may take a while.” 

It never crossed the mind of one of the four to lie 
back and take life a little easier while they were wait- 
ing to find out whether or not they were on the high 
road to the greatest ease and luxury. This fact, which 
Mr. Dermot was quick to discern, combined with the 
bright morning faces which the four turned to him 
to say good morning, instantly made the double 
twins prime favorites with the mills’ manager 
and overseer, independently of who they might prove 
to be. 



41 



42 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ I shall put you in the easiest room, though it is 
not the one that beginners ordinarily learn in,” said 
Mr. Dermot. “ However, I think the work there is 
easiest understood. It isn’t necessary to do with you 
precisely as if you were certain to remain mill work- 
ers.” 

“ I guess the easiest room is the best for us,” said 
Daisy with the cheerful Coggs laugh. “ I guess we’ll 
be pretty dumb at it.” 

Mr. Dermot himself conducted the twins into the 
room to 'which they were assigned, instead of handing 
them over to some one else. 

This was so unusual that the girls who were to be 
their working-mates eyed them with surprise and 
some suspicion, ready to be jealous if they felt justi- 
fied in being so. 

Tommy had been solemnly charged not to betray 
to any one in the mill the fact that the newcomers 
might be the grandchildren of the mill owner. Sen- 
sibly, the Coggs girls wished to keep this a secret until 
the matter was settled. 

Mr. Dermot handed them over to the superintendent 
of their room and left them. The double twins were 
assigned places together, out of consideration for 
their lack of other acquaintances, and the superintend- 
ent explained to them briefly what was expected of 
them. 

Then he called over a tall, pale girl, who was, per- 


FIRST STEP ON THE NEW PATH 43 


haps, a year older than Maizie and Daisy, but who 
looked much more than that. 

“ Will you work beside these new girls to-day, Lora, 
and help them out if they get mixed up on the work? 
This is pne of the most reliable hands we have and 
she will help you, if you need help: we call her — 
the other girls call her — Trusty, and that is far from 
a bad nickname ! ” The superintendent looked kindly 
at the girl, into whose pallor a faint flush was creep- 
ing. 

“ This is Lora Bruce. Lora, these are the Coggs 
girls, two pairs of twins, Mary, Margaret, Teresa, 
Hazel.” 

Lora looked at the four with quiet eyes, into which 
a smile began to creep., 

“ I hope you’ll like it here,” she said, as the super- 
intendent went away. “ I haven’t an idea which name 
belongs to which girl.” 

“ .We don’t use those names,” said Maizie. “ Daisy 
is Margaret, Taizie is Teresa, Hazie is Hazel, I’m 
Maizie — Mary. Maizie, Daisy, Taizie, Hazie, that’s 
what we are.” Maizie indicated the bearers of the 
names as she spoke. 

Lora laughed, and the girls near enough to hear 
this list laughed, too. 

The Coggs girls turned and beamed on their com- 
rades. 

“ Ain’t it funny?” cried Taizie. “ Everybody 


44 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


thinks it is; we do, too. We’ve made up a count 
about it; doesn’t it sound like a count? It goes like 
this : 

“ Maizie, Daisy, Taizie, Hazie, Coggs and boggs and logs to blaze; 

Maizie, Daisy, Taizie, Hazie, if you’re it you can’t be lazy, — 

I-t, it, go tell the frogs, C-o-g-g-s spells Coggs. You are it! ” 

“ For mercy’s sake! ” cried Lora. But she enjoyed 
it, and laughed till her cheeks were almost as red as 
the double twins’ were. All the girls near — and 
most in the room had gathered around by this time 
to hear the fun — joined in the laughter. 

The Coggs girls had a small triumph; they looked 
around with their merry eyes dancing, their red lips 
parted in laughter, showing their strong white teeth; 
their good nature was irresistible. The mill whistle 
blew at that moment, and a bell somewhere within the 
building rang, announcing to those outside that the 
gates were closed, and to those within that work for 
the day must begin. 

The ice was broken, the Coggs girls were estab- 
lished. The dawning suspicious jealousy of them had 
vanished. The older hands were more than ready to 
accept them and to count such jolly creatures as these 
strangers a distinct gain to their room. The forenoon 
was not easy to the double twins. Maizie and Taizie 
were quick to see what was expected of them and their 
hands obeyed their nimble wits readily. 

Daisy and Hazie were slower to learn, not as deft 


FIRST STEP ON THE NEW PATH 45 


in working. Lora kept her eye on them and helped 
them whenever they needed it, so, on the whole, the 
morning did not go badly, though the new experience 
was not easy to the double twins. 

At the noon hour the entire mill became quiet at 
the sound of the bell that, in the morning, had set it 
in motion; the insensate machinery of the mill, that 
is to say. The bell that stilled the whirring wheels 
set loose a babel of tongues in every room .and the 
shuffling sound of many feet, passing down the stairs 
and corridors, out of the main doors; many of the 
mill hands went home to their noon dinner. 

“ Do you go home? ” asked Daisy of Lora. 

Lora shook her head. “ I live too far away/’ she 
said. “ I bring my dinner. You’re near; do you go 
home ? ” 

“ No,” said Daisy. “ We wouldn’t of had a chance 
to cook anything to-day. We only came last night, 
so we haven’t anything bought. We won’t ever go 
out, anyway; ’twould take too long to get a dinner 
for ourselves. ’Tain’t ’s if there was any one at home 
to do it for us. We 'bought some things to eat to-day, 
but we’re going to try to make something ourselves 
by and by. Mrs. Deacon said she’d show us. Coun- 
try towns are awful different from big cities, ain’t 
they? We never in this world would have had any 
one show us how to oook there.” 

“ I always heard Mrs. Deacon was real kind,” said 


46 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Lora. “ I wish you’d tell me all about New York. 
What interesting girls you are! Four all alike, so 
jolly, and just looking after yourselves, living in New 
York and all! Do tell me about it! ” 

“ You tell us how to work now and we’ll tell you 
how we used to work; that’s fair! ” cried Taizie with 
her gay laugh. “ Nothing interesting about it, but I 
guess it could be fixed up into a story, now I think 
about it. Who’s that lady? Do people come here at 
lunch time? I hate visitors when I’m eating; chokes 
you up so ! ” 

Lora looked across the room with sympathy for 
Taizie’s dislike to eating under criticism. She saw 
a lady, tall, slender, quietly, but elegantly dressed. 
She had a highbred face, almost beautiful in its re- 
finement, with the expression in the eyes of one whose 
thoughts were chiefly intent upon things within, yet 
whose interested sympathy was ready for anything 
beyond her own life that needed it. 

She was not young, neither was she old, though she 
struck the double twins as elderly ; she must have been 
nearly, if not quite fifty. 

“ Oh, that’s Miss Belinda Allaire!” murmured 
Lora. “ She comes here a good deal ; she has a club 
of the mill girls. It meets at her house to read and 
sew and hear music. Miss Belinda is a great musi- 
cian. I wish I could go to the club regularly, but it’s 
far for me at night, when I’m tired, and mother’s 


FIRST STEP ON THE NEW PATH 47 


always nervous, though Miss Belinda makes sure the 
girls get home safely. She and her sister, Miss Do- 
rinda Allaire, live in a beautiful old house, up by the 
lake in Chagford proper; we call it ‘ the Stone House.’ 
Miss Belinda takes the most pains with girls who 
haven’t any mother. She ought to be especially inter- 
ested in you, who have no one at all to look after 
you!” 

“ Sounds nice,” commented Hazie. 

The twins had been watching the subject of Lora’s 
explanation with much interest as she stood talking 
to one of the girls across the room. She turned and 
came toward them with a smile that seemed to be 
directed straight to the double twins. 

“ I believe she does mean us ! ” exclaimed Daisy, 
not knowing that she spoke aloud, as Miss Allaire 
bore down upon them, still smiling, and holding out 
a hand. 

She heard Daisy and said : “ Surely I mean you, my 
dear! Will you welcome a new acquaintance? Lora 
will introduce us, though you have already been made 
known to me by Mr. Dermot; he has told me all your 
strange story.” 

Maizie slightly shook her head, and Miss Allaire 
gave her a glance that bade her not to fear disclosures. 

“ Lora told us who you were, too,” Maizie said 
then. 

“ Which is the elder, which the younger pair of 


48 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


twins ? How wonderfully alike you four are ! ” cried 
Miss Belinda. 

I’ll show you how to tell us,” said Maizie. 
“ Daisy’s my twin ; this is her. I’m Maizie. Daisy’s 
eyes are grey if you look close; mine’s blue. That 
one’s Hazie; that one’s Taizie, her twin. Taizie’s got 
dark eyelashes, Hazie light. I guess you’d see other 
things, once you got on to us, but those are the starters 
for everybody.” 

“ Thank you; I won’t forget. I mean to know you 
so well that I shall learn all your little ways, which 
are usually the best guides to knowing people,” said 
Miss Allaire. “Will you come to see me? And will 
you join my club? We have good times, the girls 
and I. I am a sort of mild spider that catches the 
flies who are alone, or haven’t as happy homes as Lora 
here; I get them into my club for girls.” 

“ So they won’t be too fly? ” asked Taizie, with a 
flash of the eye, yet half timidly, for she had seen fine 
ladies, like Miss Allaire, during her errand-girl days, 
and was a wee bit awestruck. 

Miss Belinda’s eyes laughed back at Taizie, and she 
answered quietly: 

“ At least we don’t mean to harm our flies ! Per- 
haps the club might wait for you until you see whether 
you are to stay on here — and how ! In the meantime 
I wish you would let me bring a girl and a boy I know 
to see you. There is no child in all the world sweeter, 


FIRST STEP ON THE NEW PATH 49 


lovelier than this little girl friend of mine. She is 
somewhat younger than you in years and a great deal 
younger in fact, because she is an only child, tenderly 
sheltered from everything hard by her father and 
mother’s love. You will know those dear people, too, 
and you will love them and my Nancy Porter just as 
I do — won’t they, Lora ? ” 

“ They’d be queer if they didn’t,” said Lora with 
conviction. “ Nancy’s so dear everybody loves her 
to death. But Nancy Porter isn’t nicer than her 
mother and the doctor ! ” 

“ She’s Doctor Porter’s little girl, our beloved 
Chagford physician’s one child,” Miss Belinda added, 
turning back to the twins. “ The boy is Richard Lov- 
ering, a wonderful little violinist and a wonderfully 
fine lad, quite worthy to be like an adopted son to 
Doctor Porter and Nancy’s almost-brother, which he 
is. May I bring these two to see you, my dears ? ” 

“Why?” asked Maizie, with her own blunt hon- 
esty. “ They sound like awful fine things : what’d 
they want with us ? ” 

Lora looked frightened, but Miss Belinda laughed 
in a pleased way. 

“ They will like you, twin girls ! ” she said. “ And 
I like your straight-out way of saying what you mean, 
Maizie! You see, I know which one you are already! 
I think, if you stay in Chagford, it may be most im- 
portant that you know people who will be true, good 


50 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


friends to you. I am a stranger to you, but you are 
not strangers to me. I had heard all about you before 
you came; I am here this morning expressly to see 
you — and I must not take another moment of your 
lunch hour ! Will one of you — Maizie, perhaps ? — 
walk with me to the elevator ?” 

As Maizie went away with Miss Allaire, a puzzled 
look on her face, the other three twins fell on Lora 
for an explanation, which she could not give. 

“ What makes her want us to know grand and ele- 
gant kids like those two? ” demanded Hazie. 

“ I don’t know,” Lora said slowly. “ She seemed 
to mean something. But Nancy Porter and Rick Lov- 
ering are perfect dears! And Doctor Porter and his 
wife are the very best people on earth! I’ll tell you: 
Miss Allaire is from such an old family, and is such 
an elegant lady — and so nice — that everybody is 
only too glad to have her notice them. And Mrs. 
Porter’s the kind that whatever she thinks just about 
settles things for everybody else. I don’t know why 
Miss Belinda is so interested in you, but I do know 
you’re in luck if she takes an interest in you and gets 
the Porters to.” 

“ It must be because Peter — ” began Taizie, but 
Daisy promptly stuffed a cracker into her mouth. 

“ 4 Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater ’ is a great game, 
Taizie, but it hasn’t anything to do with this,” Daisy 
said, with remarkable presence of mind, for the twins 


FIRST STEP ON THE NEW PATH 51 


were all anxious to keep the secret of Peter Debbs’ 
relationship to them, and Taizie’s slip nearly betrayed 
it. Lora looked more than ever puzzled. She did not 
believe that Taizie was going to say anything about 
the Peter that ate pumpkins, but she set this down to 
the Coggs queerness, which she began to think a very 
queer queerness indeed. In the meantime Miss Be- 
linda, walking through to the elevator with Maizie, 
explained her desire to furnish acquaintances to the 
twins, which was puzzling Maizie as much as it puz- 
zled her sisters. 

“ You mustn’t mind my being a busybody, dear 
Maizie, since I’m a well-meaning busybody/’ she 
laughed. “ You see, if you four funny young dupli- 
cates of one another should become suddenly im- 
mensely wealthy you would be preyed upon by all the 
least desirable people in the Chagfords — and every- 
where else! Let me help you to make the right sort 
of friends; you will really be glad and thankful for 
it later on. It’s a hobby of mine to look after young 
girls, when they’ll let me. Please, Maizie ? ” 

Miss Belinda leaned forward and peered into Mai- 
zie’s face with such a pretty smile and air that warm- 
hearted Maizie was wholly won to her. Miss Be- 
linda had attracted Maizie from the first glimpse of 
her. 

“ Gee, you don’t suppose I don’t like it ! I guess 
I know it’s awful good of you! I was just figuring 


52 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


out what under the canopy you wanted to bother with 
us for ! ” cried Maizie sincerely. 

“ I’m going to be fond of you, you generous- 
hearted, honest, nice girls ! ” said Miss Belinda. 

Then she went away, and Maizie slowly returned 
to her lunch, feeling that her world had changed be- 
yond recognition within twenty- four hours. 

The twins left the mill that night with Lora, but 
their ways parted at the door. The quartette turned 
towards Mrs. Deacon’s, stopping on their way to lay 
in provisions for supper. It had suddenly turned 
warm and the twins were tired; solid fare did not 
appeal to them. 

“ If you’ll all agree,” said Taizie, halting in the 
entrance to the store, “ we’ll get a box of crackers, 
some cheese, and two lemons. That’ll give us a half 
a lemon a-piece for lemonade and I’d heaps rather 
drink to-night than eat. Will you?” 

“ Yes, and I’m going to blow mys,elf to a maga- 
zine, one of the long ones with fashion pitchers,” an- 
nounced Daisy. “ Honest to goodness, I believe I 
could make a shirtwaist if I tried! Lora Bruce said 
she made hers. I’m going to spend fifteen cents for 
a 'Fashion Portrayal’ — Lora said that’s the best 
of ’em — and I’m going to study up on dressma- 
king.” 

“Well, for goodness’ sake, what’ll happen next!” 
cried Hazie. 


FIRST STEP ON THE NEW PATH 53 


“ It would be a wise guy who could say,” declared 
Maizie, so solemnly in spite of her slang, that it struck 
even her sisters as funny. 

“ You needn’t laugh,” Maizie added. “ Things 
happen as if we was in a Happens factory, instead of 
the mills. Maybe Daise can do dressmaking, if she 
can have a awful rich old grandfather.” 

“ We’ve all got him, or else none of us has, and 
we all couldn’t make shirtwaists,” said Hazie. 

The light and insufficient supper, which Taizie had 
suggested, was eaten with Daisy’s copy of the latest 
“ Fashion Portrayal ” propped against the cracker 
carton at the slight incline that its great length and 
weight allowed. 

The lemonade glasses had been pushed toward the 
centre of the table as the girls leaned together to look 
at the magazine. Occasionally one or the other twin 
would raise her glass and tip it upside down over her 
nose once more, in the vain hope that another drop 
had leaked out from the lemon peel in the bot- 
tom. 

“ Oh, my sainted aunt, if here they ain’t!” cried 
Taizie, in a sort of whispered scream, as she chanced 
to glance toward the window. 

Miss Belinda Allaire was coming up the little walk 
to the house. Following her was a girl and a boy, 
while at the little gate stood a pair of heavy, alto- 
gether disproportioned horses, attached to a carriage 


54 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


equally out of proportion to the small house before 
which it waited. 

“ Let ’em ring; it’s sweller ! ” murmured Hazie, as 
Daisy started to get up. “ To be sure, the door-bell’s 
busted.” 

But Miss Allaire, who seemed to have great knowl- 
edge of the Coggs and their circumstances, knocked 
on a door which this room on the lower floor hap- 
pened to have, that led directly to the yard, and 
immediately upon knocking opened the door and 
admitted herself and her comrades. 

“ I’ve brought my friends,” announced Miss Be- 
linda. “ Nancy, Rick, these are the Coggs girls.” 

Nancy Porter plainly made a tremendous effort to 
be polite, but failed. She burst out laughing and 
laughed till she choked, and Rick Lovering laughed 
with her. 

“ You see, I told Nancy and Rick I was going to 
take them to see ‘ the Coggs,’ and they made up their 
minds that it was another sort — cogs in machinery, 
you know. They were not prepared to find the ‘ cogs 9 
were girls,” explained Miss Belinda, whose droll look 
when she introduced the double twins to Nancy and 
Rick had been responsible for their outburst. 

“ I’m so sorry,” stammered Nancy, crimson over 
her own rudeness. 

The double twins laughed almost as heartily as she 
and Rick had. 


FIRST STEP ON THE NEW PATH 55 

“ Don’t mind us,” Maizie said. “ First off 'we 
thought it was queer if we was so killing funny the 
minute you saw us, but I see the joke now.” 

The twins looked keenly at their younger visitors. 
Rick was a beautiful boy. His features were as regu- 
larly perfect as if they had been carved in marble to 
represent the young Apollo. His head was set on his 
shoulders with noble grace; his expression was frank 
and yet dreamy; his face full of sensitiveness, yet 
strong. He bore himself like a prince in a fairy tale, 
without a touch of self-consciousness. 

The little girl, Nancy, was not precisely pretty, but 
she was better than that. Her face was flower-like 
in its delicacy of outline and expression. Her fine 
brown hair rolled smoothly back from a broad low 
brow, on which innocence and intelligence were writ- 
ten. Her greyish blue eyes were alight with the 
warmth of loving kindness and sparkling with the fire 
of imagination and humor. It was a sensitive, dear 
little face, one that no one could resist, and the gentle 
breeding of her home training spoke in every motion 
of the little maid’s slight body and eager hands. The 
impetuous twins felt a strong desire on the instant 
to kiss Nancy’s quivering, delicate lips, laughing at 
them and with them. 

“ Please tell Nancy and Rick about yourselves, 
Coggs girls ? ” said Miss Belinda. “ I have not told 
them a syllable.” 


56 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ We’ve been knocking around,” said Daisy at loss 
how to begin. But the others joined with her, and 
in quartette they told the remarkable story of their 
lives, which they were just beginning to realize was 
remarkable, though they were getting tired of telling 
it. 

They could not have had a better audience than 
Nancy and Rick. The whole visit had proved over- 
whelming to Nancy. Expecting to be shown cog 
wheels and finding twice-over twins was bad enough, 
but finding them such breezy, uneducated, jolly, en- 
tirely likable girls, so completely outside her previous 
experiences, and hearing from them a biography like 
a story book, rendered Nancy speechless when it 
ended. 

As Mis9 Belinda had not told Nancy anything about 
the twins the doctor’s little girl did not know what 
was expected of her on this strange visit. 

She liked the Goggs girls, no one could help liking 
them, but there was no denying that they would not 
fit in well with Nancy’s friends. 

The shrewd twins saw that Nancy was in the dark 
as to what Miss Belinda hoped from her and they 
looked at her with fresh laughter in their eyes. 

Rick’s eyes twinkled back at them, and this settled 
Rick’s standing to them. 

Any one who could see things humorously was 
qualified for Coggs’ liking. 


FIRST STEP ON THE NEW PATH 57 


“ Will you come to see me soon ? ” Nancy asked, 
feeling her way. “ We have good times at our house 
all the time, and my mother — you’d like my mother ! 
Not better than my doctor-daddy, though! ” 

“ You see, Nancy,” Miss Belinda said, “ these chil- 
dren will need the right sort of friends if they fall 
into all that money. It struck me that the Porters, 
big and little, would be the best friends they could 
have.” 

“ Oh ! ” cried Nancy, swiftly understanding, and 
instantly foreseeing her lovely mother gently guiding 
these honest girls into correct ways of speech and 
manners, showing them how to be “ the wealthy 
Misses Coggs.” 

“ We’d hate to be tied down, though,” said Taizie 
doubtfully. “ We’ve been looking after ourselves 
pretty well.” 

“ That’s right ! ” Hazie confirmed her twin. “ Why 
couldn’t we just sail right in and have a good time? 
It’s easy enough to be rich. Being poor’s the tough 
thing! We’ll have fun all the time, doing whatever 
we’ve a mind to, and that’s not such a job! ’Course 
we like you, though,” she added truthfully, to Nancy 
and Rick. “ If we get rich and buy a autymobile car, 
with a show-for to run it, we’ll take you out. We’re 
going to take out most, though, the girls in the mills 
and people that ain’t getting to go.” 

But Maizie Coggs had been watching their guests, 


58 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


and, for the first time in her life, felt doubt of her 
own fitness to do what might await her doing. 

She looked at Miss Belinda, the perfection of a 
gentlewoman, gracious, sweet-voiced, graceful; at 
Rick with his noble bearing and his marvellous ideal 
beauty, his manners, which made themselves felt 
though he hardly spoke, so easy, unconscious, yet po- 
lite — Maizie had never seen a boy like this ! And 
Nancy, like a flower in her cool grey-blue gown and 
hat, seeming far younger than Taizie and Hazie, who 
were only a year her elders, a genuine little girl, and 
a shy one, yet with much of Miss Belinda’s gracious- 
ness, the finest little revelation of girlhood Maizie had 
ever seen. Maizie was clever enough to see that here 
was something far removed from the rough-and-ready 
brightness of the twins, something that was better 
fitted to use great wealth than the Coggs twins 
were. 

“Oh, I don’t know, Taize and Haze; we’re not 
such a much! We could stand getting a few points,” 
Maizie said slowly. “ I guess I’m kinder catching on. 
We might have fun in the car, but we wouldn’t be 
the real thing. What’s the good of having fun and 
being rich, if folks just simply holler about you behind 
your back? They’d be nice enough in front of us, 
trust ’em! That’s what Miss Allaire means. I see! 
I’m sure I’m awful grateful to you for taking an 
interest in us,” Maizie added with some feeling. “ If 


FIRST STEP ON THE NEW PATH 59 


we get rich we’ll stand and let you sandpaper us off. 
Gee, ain’t it awful the things in this world ! First off 
you think getting rich’s the only thing, or else getting 
a good job, if you haven’t any idea of being rich. 
Then, the minute you see a quarter or two rolling 
your way, you see you’ve got to brace up to spend it 
right. If you can make us more decent — more like 
that, you know — we’ll stand for it ! ” 

Maizie nodded at Nancy to point her remarks, pre- 
cisely as if Nancy were unable to understand, and Rick 
doubled up with laughter at her frankness and Nancy’s 
blushes. 

“Bravo, Maizie!” cried Miss Allaire. “ You ’ll 
see more and more what you are catching a glimpse 
of to-night. You are a dear girl; you are all dear 
girls, but that goes without saying if one is, since you 
are as alike as daisies in a field! I can see that Nancy 
and Rick think you are the right sort of girls, too, so 
I hope we shall all be friends.” 

“ Maybe we’ll look kinder funny being friends with 
’em,” said Daisy, “ but we’re it, if you’ll have us. 
They’re all silk, I guess, fast color.” 

Miss Belinda bore her Nancy and Rick away. The 
Coggs watched them into the carriage and nodded 
their brilliant and fly-away locks at them as they drove 
off, waving their hands hard in response to Nancy and 
Rick, who waved at them out of the carriage windows. 
Then the double twins turned and walked back into 


60 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

their room and sat down and looked at one another 
in silence. 

“ Say, ain’t it awful, Mabel ! ” said Taizie at last. 

“Why?” demanded Daisy. 

" They’re so fine. If being rich’s going to make 
me have to try to be like that I’ll feel like a wheel- 
barrow trying to be a airship,” groaned Taizie. 

“ Pshaw! You won’t have to do it all at once,” 
said Maizie. “ Besides, we sha’n’t never try to be up 
to that. What we’ve got to do is to polish up a little 
and tone down a lot. That little Nancy wouldn’t say 
‘ ain’t it awful, Mabel,’ Taizie. Not by a jugful!” 

“ Nor that either, Maize! ” cried Hazie. And they 
all laughed. 

“ That’s what I mean ; we’ve got to cut it all out 
and pick up the right thing,” persisted Maizie. “ I 
guess we can, too! We’ve picked up the slang, just 
hearing it, so we can pick up other lingo and nice ways 
dead easy. We’ll like it; they’ll give it to us easy. 
Ain’t they great? ” 

“ They sure are! ” Daisy agreed. “ But that Miss 
Allaire brought them just to show us; just like they 
was kinder catechisms and we was heathens.” 

“ Well, heathens learn ’em, they say, and get to be 
just like folks; so’ll we,” said Maizie. “ I don’t mind 
’s long’s catechisms come so nice. If you’re a heathen, 
why the only thing to do’s to be a sensible heathen and 
take what’s sent you to get you to be a Christian, in 


FIRST STEP ON THE NEW PATH 61 

the right clothes. I’m just crazy about that little 
Nancy ! ” 

“We all are,” said Daisy wearily, “ but Fm tearing 
hungry. Crackers and lemonade don’t stay by a body, 
and society’s awful hungry work.” 

Maizie looked at her twin and laughed; she saw 
that Daisy was a little castdown by the complications 
which coming wealth seemed to threaten, that none 
of the other twins saw as clearly as she did that these 
new acquaintances were the best of all their recent 
forms of good luck. 

“You poor kid!” she said, carrying out her obli- 
gations as the recognized head of the family and ad- 
ministrator of its funds. “ It’s early yet. We’ll go 
down to the drug store and have a sundae a-piece, 
chocolate syrup, and they serve crackers. Lora told 
me the best place for ’em. I’ll stand for it; if we are 
Peter Debbs’ grandchildren we can afford a sundae 
each, and if we ain’t, then we’ll need it to make up for 
the disappointment.” 


CHAPTER IV 


THE COGGS SLIP INTO PLACE 

■ — ^ ILL the Misses Coggs please come 
this way ? ” said Mr. Dermot, 
standing in the doorway of the 
room in which the two sets of 
twins worked. “ Will the other 
girls please close up and continue their work? Finish 
the work which the Coggs girls were doing, if you 
please. They are not returning this afternoon. ,, 

“ Oh, my land, Peter Debbs is going to be a grand- 
father!” cried Taizie. 

And the four Coggs girls hastily departed, their 
faces crimson, their eyes snapping with excitement. 
They left their comrades a generous share in this ex- 
citement. Combined with Taizie’s mysterious ejacu- 
lation, it caused a thrill in the room and awoke a 
strong conviction that, as the Coggs twins would have 
said, “ there was something doing.” 

Mr. Dermot stood aside and let them precede him 
into the corridor, then he followed. 

“ Mr. Carberry is here, my dears,” he said. “ Will 
you come into my office to see him ? ” 

62 



THE COGGS SLIP INTO PLACE 63 


“ Wherever you say,” murmured Maizie, hardly 
conscious of what she was doing. 

It might be that Mr. Carberry had come to settle 
the legal side of Mr. Debbs’ acknowledgment of his 
grandchildren. It might be that he had come to tell 
the twins that there never was to be such an acknowl- 
edgment, that Mr. Debbs had decided that they were 
not his daughter’s children, that they were to go on 
for ever, poor and struggling, and Mr. Carberry would 
be “ obliged to trouble them to repay what they had 
borrowed from him.” 

Maizie realized how hard it would be thus to have 
their hopes dashed to the ground, how much harder 
it would be now to be poor than before they had seen 
their dreams of abundance and gay good times likely 
to be fulfilled. 

And, because it seemed as though she could hardly 
bear it, Maizie felt sure that she was to be called upon 
to bear it, that this was what Mr. Carberry had to tell 
them. 

Mr. Carberry was in the office, being entertained 
by Tommy Giddings, when the twins arrived under 
Mr. Dermot’s escort. He was laughing at something 
Tommy had just said, and he arose to greet the four 
girls with the laugh still in his eyes and on his lips. 
But Maizie reminded herself this showed nothing, ex- 
cept that it did not matter to Mr. Carberry which way 
the question had been solved ; he was not expecting to 


64 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


be acknowledged as a granddaughter by Peter 
Debbs ! 

“ Well, yau wonderful twofold twins,” Mr. Car- 
berry greeted them, “ How do you like the Chag- 
ford towns and working in your grandfather’s 
mills?” 

Maizie caught her breath, four right hands clutched 
at a girl, as the four twins heard the implication in 
Mr. Carberry’s words that these mills were their 
grandfather’s, or, rather, that their owner was their 
grandfather. 

“ All right,” said Maizie breathlessly. “ Are 
we?” 

“Are you what?” asked Mr. Carberry. “Work- 
ing in your grandfather’s mills? Certainly. Or you 
were until you were called to see me. I doubt your 
working here longer. Mr. Debbs has admitted all I 
claimed for you. You are the children of his only 
child, Mary Margaret Debbs, wife of William Coggs. 
The proof I laid before the old man can’t be disputed. 
Mr. Debbs has written me to say that he admits it and 
is ready to do his duty by you. He does not care to 
see you. I think this is not precisely from unkind 
feeling, but from a strong objection to being disturbed 
in his very settled habits.” 

Mr. Carberry had gone on saying more than he had 
set out to say in stating the fact of his triumph, be- 
cause he saw that the four young heirs of old Peter 


THE COGGS SLIP INTO PLACE 65 


Debbs were considerably shaken by his news. The 
color had gone out of their faces, leaving them white, 
with the freckles on their cheerful noses conspicuous. 
Their eyes dilated, their lips parted; Mr. Carberry 
could see that Hazie and Daisy were trembling. But 
this phase of their emotion was quickly over. Rally- 
ing they took hands, as if by a common impulse, spread 
out in line and crowed triumphantly in quartette, pre- 
cisely like a pen of prize cockerels. 

“ Oh, gee ! ” the four sighed rapturously after this 
performance. “Oh, gee! What comes next? ” 

“ It ought to be a fricassee,” laughed Mr. Carberry. 
“ Do you mean what arrangement has your grand- 
father made for you? None whatever.” Then, see- 
ing the blank disappointment on the twins’ faces, he 
supplemented this statement hastily. 

“ I mean that he has not taken any steps to control 
you, or to arrange for your future, beyond providing 
for you,” he said. “ I did my best to get him to ap- 
point a guardian for you, or to take charge of you 
himself, but he was determined not to interfere with 
you. It did no good for me to remind him that the 
younger pair of you were but fourteen years old and 
the elder hardly more. He says that if you have got 
on without any one to look after you poor, you may 
try it rich. He said that he should like to see how 
much sense you have. It is rather a cruel test, but 
I venture to hope you may triumph over it.” 


66 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ I’ll bet it takes more sense to spend money than 
it does to go without it,” said Maizie. “ You see, 
girls, it’s lucky we know Miss Allaire and those Por- 
ter kids! Go on, Mr. Carberry — please.” 

“ Mr. Debbs means to give you a yearly allowance 
of twenty-five thousand dollars; it is the interest on 
half a million. Out of that you must provide for 
yourselves entirely, buy whatever you want, whether 
it is clothes, houses, automobiles, anything. But he 
decides to consider that your income began six months 
ago and to allow you half of one year’s income to 
start on, in case you want to make a home for your- 
selves. So twelve thousand five hundred dollars are 
deposited for you to draw against as a capital to begin 
on, and your regular income for this quarter, six thou- 
sand two hundred and fifty dollars, is also deposited 
for you to live on for the coming three months. I 
am instructed to make you understand that your in- 
come will be paid quarterly, in advance, and that you 
must arrange to live within it, paying all bills as they 
fall due.” 

It is more than doubtful if Mr. Carberry carried 
out his instructions to make the twins understand 
what they were to do, how they were to use this in- 
come. From the first overwhelming statement that 
they — they, the Coggs twins, poor, untaught, unre- 
lated little they — were to have an income of twenty- 
five thousand dollars a year they had all four gone 


THE COGGS SLIP INTO PLACE 67 


off into a sort of waking swoon, floating off on a high 
tide of figures. 

Taizie returned to consciousness first of the double 
twins ; she looked at Mr. Carberry as if her eyes had 
never before rested upon a specimen of his race. 

“ Did you say twenty-five thousand dollars ? Every 
single year? To spend?” she cried. 

Mr. Carberry nodded his laughing assent, without 
speaking. 

“ When we used to talk about being rich maybe we 
might of got up to a hundred dollars every month to 
spend, but — Ain’t it two thousand? Twice twelve’s 
twenty-four ? ” gasped Daisy. 

“ Two thousand eighty-three dollars and, about, 
thirty-four cents a month, to be exact.” Mr. Car- 
berry’s laugh rang out; he was enjoying this scene 
greatly, as were Mr. Dermot and Tommy. 

“ I guess it is funny,” said Daisy soberly, “ but that 
thirty- four cents would have been worth talking about 
in New York. We didn’t get near the eighty-four 
dollars.” 

Maizie roused with a jerk; she turned so dark a 
red that she looked apoplectic. 

“ Who’ll I tell ? ” she cried. “ I’ve got to go tell 
some one! I’ll never believe it ’less I tell some one! 
Oh, talk about luck and getting rich ! We never meant 
it like this ! ” 

“ Go tell Aunt Elona; she’ll be surprised enough,” 


68 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


suggested Tommy. “ I suppose she and I won’t dare 
talk to you after to-day.” 

“Get out, Tommy Giddings! What’d make us 
turn silly when we most need our sense ? ” demanded 
Maizie. “ Say, we do go tell Mrs. Deacon, girls ? 
We can’t tell Lora till the bell rings to quit. Let’s go 
up and tell Miss Allaire. Where does she live? ” 

“ Shall we discuss where you are to live ? Shall we 
try to arrange your future ? ” suggested Mr. Carberry. 

“ Oh, not yet ! ” Maizie and Daisy exclaimed to- 
gether. “ It’s too new. We’re good and comfortable 
where we are stopping. I’ll tell you: We’ll go up to 
see Miss Allaire. She’s a good one, and, besides, I 
like her. We’ll get some tips from her. Then can’t 
we have kinder a blow out to-night? Tommy, get 
Lora when she comes out and bring her along and 
have a nice supper — something real dandy, like a 
steak, maybe, and some canned baked beans, a good 
kind, and maybe some of those potato chips you get 
ready made, and some baker’s cake. We couldn’t 
have ice-cream, could we? And nobody say a word 
to Mrs. Deacon, or Lora, till supper, and then spring 
it on ’em ! ” 

Maizie made the suggestions for this banquet with 
some hesitation, but fortified herself as she went on 
by remembering that they could now afford even this 
lavish magnificence. 

“ That’s it, Maizie ! ” Taizie approved her. “ We’ll 


THE COGGS SLIP INTO PLACE 69 


celebrate. What’s the matter with bottled soft drinks, 
like birch beer ? ” 

“ Or saucy p’rilla,” added Hazie, speaking for the 
first time since the family glory had blinded her. 

“ That’s a go 1 ” said Daisy. “If we don’t have to 
work this afternoon we’d better go see Miss Allaire. 
Didn’t you say we could be let off, Mr. Dermot? ” 

“ Do you mean that you still consider yourselves 
mill hands ? ” laughed Mr. Dermot. “ You will not 
work for me another day, will you ? ” 

“ Gee, that’s right ! ” cried Daisy once more over- 
whelmed. “We — why, we won’t ever have to go to 
work again, will we?” 

“With twenty-five thousand a year? I guess not 
exactly! We won’t know how to stay home, though,” 
said Maizie. 

“Well, you watch me!” said Taizie significantly. 
“ If we’re going up to Miss Allaire’s let’s mosey along. 
I guess we’d better go; she’ll be the best one.” 

“ Yes, she knows, and she’s good,” added Hazie. 
“ I’m scared.” 

“ It’s a long distance from here to Miss Allaire’s,” 
said Mr. Dermot. “ Tommy had better call a carriage 
for you.” 

“ Oh, my aunt ! A carriage for the Coggs twins ! ” 
murmured Taizie faintly. “All right; call it, 
Tommy. Maybe it’ll come when you call it; it 
wouldn’t for me. I’m too weak to make it hear.” 


70 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Tommy doubled up over this speech, but he easily 
made the carriage — or the stable — hear over the 
telephone, and it was not long be/fore the first car- 
riage that the twins had ever summoned, or ridden 
in on their own responsibility, stopped at the mill door. 

“ Haven’t we got to talk to you, Mr. Carberry, 
about things ? And — what made me forget ! — I’ve 
got to return what you lent us to get here,” said Mai- 
zie pausing at the carriage step. 

“ Oh, I shall be here three or four days, till every- 
thing is settled. Go on your visit, Miss Maizie; my 
business will wait,” said Mr. Carberry, handing her 
into the carriage and holding her serge skirt away 
from the wheel “ as though it had been velvet,” Maizie 
thought. 

“ It will be, too ! ” she declared aloud as she settled 
herself and they started. 

“Will be what? What will be?” asked Daisy. 

“ My skirt, velvet,” answered Maizie. “ I’m going 
to wear velvet all the time when I haven’t got on satin 
and silk and lace — and stuff ! ” 

“We all will,” Daisy said emphatically. “ The 
very first thing I want’s a plumncolored velvet dress, 
with a gold trimming, like that girl at Keith’s had 
one night.” 

“ It’s getting too hot to buy that first,” said Hazie. 
“ I guess I’ll get some kinder blue lace over a satin, 
yellow, maybe, for summer.” 


THE COGGS SLIP INTO PLACE 71 


“ And a diamond ! ” cried Taizie ecstatically. 
“ Say, girls, what d’you s’pose a real diamond’d cost, 
set up awful high and so’t would show?” 

“ Not so much; you could have it; we’ll all have 
one,” said Maizie in a rapture. 

All the long drive from Chagford Falls to Chagford 
proper, and then up past the lake, where stood the 
stone house which was the Misses Allaire’s dignified 
old Colonial home, these blissful double twins kept 
lengthening their list of what they were to have, as 
one desirable thing after another occurred to them. 
The list varied constantly, but a few things held their 
own as permanent desires. These were the gorgeous 
clothing, the diamond rings, an automobile and a truly 
splendid house, which they began to realize they might 
actually buy and own; not rent, but own ! 

“ Maybe we could buy a house for the money Mr. 
Carberry said we had to start us, the money for the 
last six months that grand — Mr. Debbs handed over. 
And then maybe we could sort of scrape along on the 
six thousand we’ve got for the next three months,” 
said Daisy solemnly. 

The four twins fairly rolled on the seats, tumbling 
over on their sides laughing at the exquisite joke of 
their being barely able to exist for three months on 
this sum. “ And five hundred, besides ! ” added Tai- 
zie, breathless. 

“ But I’ll tell you one thing,” said Maizie, with 


72 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


sudden prudence. “ We don’t know any more than 
one of the littlest kewpie dolls what it’ll cost to keep 
house and pay folks. We’ve got to be careful till we 
find out. It’s pretty lucky we know Miss Allaire, and 
that doctor and his wife are going to give us a tip or 
two, because we might spill ourselves out, going too 
fast, and I’ll bet Mr. Debbs wouldn’t stand for it. 
Didn’t you hear Mr. Carberry say he wanted to see 
what sense we had? We’ve got to show him. We’d 
have enough fun to kill us if we just set around at 
first and had all the ice-cream we want, and planned 
it out.” 

“ It wouldn’t of hurt him to have seen us,” said 
Taizie, and the other three knew that she meant their 
grandfather. 

“ No, it wouldn’t,” said Daisy. “ But it won’t hurt 
us not to,” she added proudly. 

“ This is a awful pretty drive,” remarked Hazie. 

It was. The road ran along the lake, bordered by 
noble trees of more than a century’s growth, and the 
scattered houses on the way sat back amid parklike 
grounds, with beautiful gardens just getting into per- 
fection, and with paths that wound under shade trees, 
down to orchards which were only a week or two 
past their bloom. Among these houses was one that 
impressed the Coggs twins as the most magnificent 
private residence they had ever seen. Its situation 
was really most beautiful, but the house was like a 


THE COGGS SLIP INTO PLACE 73 


particularly expensive nightmare, caused by a supper 
of all the viands that stand for extravagance. It was 
yellowish brick, with turrets and towers, pointed and 
rounding; windows of every sort of architecture, put 
into every unlikely place, and the trimmings were 
stone, with absurd rounded shingles under the eaves. 

There was a sign on the big gateposts that guarded 
the entrance stating that this marvellous house was 
“ For Sale.” 

The twins read it and caught at one another, moved 
by the same thought. 

“ Whose house is that?” asked Maizie in a tone 
that she carefully made careless. 

The driver turned to her, not in the least misled. 
Not for nothing had he heard the conversation that 
had filled him with amazement all the way here. His 
sharp Yankee wits were perfectly capable of putting 
two and two together. 

“ That,” he said significantly, “ is a great bargain. 
A man named Foster built that house and then failed 
up, so’s’t he never lived in it, not more’n a few months. 
It must have cost him thousands of dollars, maybe 
fifty. It’ll be bought now for ten or so. Nobody 
comes along wantin’ to invest in it. Some folks who 
can put so much as ten thousand or so in a house say 
it’s got more styles of architecture in it than they’re 
looking to get in one purchase. So it goes. I guess 
I’d ought to say so it don’t go! That house’s called 


74 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


round the Chagfords ‘ Foster’s Folly,’ because Mr. 
Foster didn’t have the wherewithal to back up its 
building — and other reasons. But it’s a great bar- 
gain, and somebody with ready cash’s going to get 
the benefit of it.” 

The twins exchanged hand pressures; the hands 
were cold. The thought that this palace might be 
theirs was almost unbearably glorious. 

“ And it’s got some furniture in it ; quite consid- 
erable,” added their driver. 

Miss Belinda Allaire received her callers cordially 
and presented them to her elder sister, Miss Dorinda, 
who was slender and aristocratic-looking like the 
younger Miss Allaire, but was less attractive to 
the girls. They soon discovered that she was just 
as ready to be their friend, however. She heard their 
great news with no less excitement than her sister 
betrayed, and showed just as much interest in their 
half-formed plans. 

“ It’s wonderful, perfectly wonderful ! ” declared 
Miss Belinda. “ I should think you’d be wildly ex- 
cited, you double doublets! It’s the strangest story! 
And really a great deal of money! Oh, my dears, do 
go slow and don’t make mistakes ! Or at least not too 
many, and no serious ones ! ” 

“ We don’t want to,” said Maizie earnestly. “ We 
hurried right up here ’cause we didn’t. We’re be- 
ginning to see it’s a bigger job than we thought. 


THE COGGS SLIP INTO PLACE 75 


We're going to the city — to Boston — to buy some 
good clothes. And we thought — do you think ? — 
we want a house of our own, Miss Allaire. Do you 
think that lovely big yellowish one near here that’s 
for sale would be too grand for us? The man that 
drove us up here said it was a bargain.” 

Maizie looked at her appealingly, and the six equally 
eager eyes of her sisters looked just as longingly at 
Miss Belinda for a favorable verdict. 

Miss Belinda hesitated. “ It is not good, my dears. 
It is no sort of architecture; every conceivable style 
is piled upon it; it looks like a child’s box of building 
blocks, set up as a child might put them together. 
That is why no one has bought it. But the grounds 
are fine, the situation perfect. It could be altered, if 
one chose, later on, when its owner saw what it 
needed. And it is a bargain, except that it is ugly. 
Perhaps — yes, I think it might answer for you,” said 
Miss Belinda. 

Her comments on the ugliness of the house rolled 
over the twins’ four tawny heads without making the 
slightest impression upon their minds. They did not 
think it ugly ; they thought it most magnificent. 
Ugliness, from an artistic standpoint, did not enter 
yet into their knowledge. All that they really heard 
Miss Belinda say was that it was a bargain, that the 
grounds and situation were fine, and that they might 
have it. This settled the question. When the twins 


76 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


took their leave it was with their minds made up to 
their future residence and their hearts fairly thumping 
when they tried fully to take in the stupendous fact 
that such a house might be their very own. 

With a warm look of liking and sympathy in their 
eyes the Misses Allaire watched the twins drive away. 
The twins were so simple, so happy, so interesting and 
so generous! 

“ Lora Bruce helped us a lot to start into work,” 
Daisy had said as they went away. “ We’re going to 
give her a good time now.” 

“ We’re going to give her more’n a good time,” 
Maizie had added. “ We’re going to try to give her 
a great deal more’n a good time, if only she won’t be 
proud and will take it. And Mrs. Deacon’s been real 
good to us; we want to show we know it. We’ve got 
to figure up what we’ve got to spend and not go 
ahead buying everything we want, so we won’t have 
enough for other folks.” 

“ Yes,” agreed Hazie. “ We’ve had it hard our- 
selves, so we’ve got to kinder grease other folks’s 
wheels.” 

It was these parting speeches that made the Misses 
Allaire watch the twins out of sight with the warm 
look that revealed the regard these big-hearted girls 
were winning from them. 

The twins found Mrs. Deacon sorely puzzled, and 
a little annoyed, on their return. Tommy had or- 


THE COGGS SLIP INTO PLACE 77 


dered a ready-made supper, as far as was possible 
following the twins’ suggestions, but he had brought 
Lora to his aunt’s with him, and unexpected company, 
as well as unexpected festivities, as Mrs. Deacon said, 
“ put her about dreadful.” 

However, Mrs. Deacon was not a cross woman, and 
when Lora and Tommy flew around, helping get the 
supper ready before the double twins came back, her 
annoyance flew after them. She grew cheerful, catch- 
ing the hints in Tommy’s frequent allusions that some- 
thing was about to happen, and in his manner, which 
was a compound of Sherlock Holmes and a trumpeter, 
of one filled both with mystery and triumph. 

When the twins came in they came with a rush, 
looking so joyous that Lora exclaimed, and Mrs. 
Deacon performed a remarkable sleight-of-hand trick 
with a dish that she nearly dropped, but caught on the 
instant. 

They jumped at Lora and swung her around, all 
four of them in a jubilant mix-up, but they shook 
their heads at Tommy, warning him not to betray 
them. 

“ We’re going to slick up a little, then we’ll be 
ready,” said Daisy, and they all four rushed away for 
the operation. 

“ We haven’t anything to dress up in — yet ! ” said 
Taizie significantly, returning in advance of the 
others. “ My, but that supper looks good ! ” 


78 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ It’s all ready, but it’s curious your havin’ it here, 
when you don’t so much as board with me,” Mrs. 
Deacon permitted herself to say. “ But, there ! It’s 
ready, as I said, so do let’s sit down and eat it hot. 
I guess you’ve got something on the go. Tommy 
Giddings’s bristling with points he’d love to use, for 
all the world like a paper o’ pins.” 

“ Maizie sits at the foot, opposite you, Mrs. Deacon, 
’cause she’s the head of the Coggses, but the rest don’t 
matter,” announced Daisy. 

They took their places at the table according to this 
decision, and, for a time, they were all so busy that 
conversation suffered. But after the steak had dis- 
appeared, the baked beans diminished, the Saratoga 
chips gone snappingly to their end, including those 
errant ones which had flown out of the dish when a 
spoon was inserted and had to be captured and eaten 
with fingers, when the supper was nearly over, Tommy 
leaned back in his chair and said feelingly: 

“How long are you girls going to keep this up? 
I’m bursting with supper, and it isn’t fair to keep me 
bursting with news, too. Tell, one of you ! ” 

Thus adjured, the twins saw that the time had come 
for their great announcement. 

“ Which’ll tell? Let’s do it together,” cried Tai- 
zie. 

So, all together, the double twins shouted their 
news. But the result was not as impressive as it 


THE COGGS SLIP INTO PLACE 79 


would have been if there had been a previous agree- 
ment on what was to be said. 

One shouted: “ We’re rich! ,, Another: “ We’re 
Peter Debbs’ grandchildren ! ” A third : “ We've got 
twenty-five thousand dollars to spend every year ! ” 
While Hazie’s words in the quartette were : “ We're 
wealthy ladies and we’re going to buy that big house 
up by Miss Allaire’s and a autymobile ! " 

In spite of the fact that all four said different 
things, and no two came out at the end of their sen- 
tences at the same time, the sense of all four was 
clear, and the words which lapped over at the end of 
the longer sentences were unmistakable. The effect 
on the audience of two was all that one could have 
hoped. Lora fell back in her chair and stared open- 
mouthed, quite pale from the shock. 

Mrs. Deacon upset the cream jug, which sent a 
stream of cream directly on the head of Araminta, the 
cat, who was sitting close to her mistress, hopefully, 
and who doubtless regarded the cream as a generous, 
though misdirected contribution to her welfare. 

Mrs. Deacon threw up both hands — which ex- 
plained the cream jug — and gasped. 

“ For — the — land’s — sake ! ” she exclaimed 
slowly. Then she added: “Well, I want to know! 
Are you — you ain’t old Peter Debbs’ grandchildren, 
and you ain’t really tellin’ us you’re awful rich?” 

“ That’s what ! ” cried Maizie jubilantly. “ We 


80 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


can’t stay here with you, because we’re going to buy 
that big yellowish house over beside the lake — Fos- 
ter’s, I guess.” 

“Foster’s Folly! Cracky!” cried Tommy. 

“ But we’re going to keep our room here and do 
something, if you let us. I guess we’ll fix it up with 
newspapers and things for a reading-room, for the 
mills. How’d that do? And we’re going to Boston 
the first day we can get there and buy clothes. We 
need some one to go along to show us the way and 
what to buy. Will you go? ” Maizie poured out her 
words like a flood. 

“ I’d admire to ! ” said Mrs. Deacon, a faint color 
creeping into her sallow pallor. “ I’ve never seen nice 
clothes in stores, hardly. When I was where they 
were I never looked at ’em, because what was the use ? 
I always thought just to go and buy once, like open- 
ing a sluice in a dam, would be something that would 
make me feel I was about ready to say I’d lived! I 
haven’t been to Boston in dear knows when ! I’d ad- 
mire to go with you, buyin’ in, though I’m bound to 
tell you that more’n likely some one with more expe- 
rience — like the Allaires, or Mrs. Porter — ’d advise 
you better.” 

“ No, indeed! It would be lovely to have you, if 
you haven’t seen many nice clothes. We haven’t 
either, for when Taizie and Hazie ran errands for the 
dressmaker’s place the clothes were always tied up in 


THE COGGS SLIP INTO PLACE 81 


the boxes. We’d like to have you help us pick out, 
if you haven’t seen many,” said Daisy earnestly, with- 
out the least idea that this might be funny. 

“ You’re going to have fun out of it, Lora,” said 
Taizie. “ You look all in! Ain’t you glad it’s all 
come out so comical ? ” 

“ ’Course I’m glad! ” said Lora. “ But I never was 
so surprised! I’m having fun now, as far as that 
goes, and I have had ever since you came.” 

“ My goodness, I don’t mean fun like thinking four 
of a kind was funny! ” cried Taizie. “ I mean good 
times. You’ve been good to us; it’s our turn. And 
Tommy’s been awful decent, too; I guess we’ll show 
him something ! ” 

“ It’s real solemn with it’s bein’ so fine,” said Mrs. 
Deacon. “ It’s natural you young folks should think 
only of the good times it’ll give you. But it’s solemn, 
and you’d ought to be very good and grateful. 
Seem’s if we ought to have a hymn on the melodeon; 
Lora, you play one.” 

“ Can you play, Lora ? ” asked Hazie, impressed. 

“ I can play one hymn and some little easy tunes,” 
said Lora rising. “ I took a few lessons by corre- 
spondence, got ’em getting subscriptions to a farm 
paper.” 

She seated herself at the melodeon and pulled out 
four stops with an air of competence that awed the 
generous twins. 


82 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Then she played the one hymn that she knew. It 
proved to be “ Rescue the Perishing.” At first it did 
not seem precisely suitable as a hymn of thanksgiving, 
but when one considered from what friendlessness and 
utter poverty the double twins had been rescued, per- 
haps it was not so unfitting. 

In any case, the Coggs girls admired it heartily, and 
it lifted the occasion from one of merely worldly re- 
joicing to a gravity that befitted the responsibilities of 
immense wealth. 


CHAPTER V 


THE QUARTETTE SINGS “ HOME, SWEET HOME ” 

T doesn’t take any longer to buy a 
house than it does to get potato 
salad and frankforters in a delly 
cattessen store!” said Taizie, 
amazed to discover this. “ We 
didn’t always know whether we wanted potato salad 
and frankforters, or something else, when we went in, 
but we knew we wanted this house the minute we saw 
it, so we didn’t waste time looking along the counter. 
Besides, we didn’t have so much money to spend for 
frankforters as we did for a house, according to the 
size of the two, and that makes a difference. We 
use’ to want to make it reach ’s far ’s ’twould,” said 
Daisy. “ Well, anyhow, we’ve got the house and 
we’ve got all the papers signed and we’ve seen Mr. 
Carberry off and we’re on our own hook and, my 
gracious, don’t it feel funny!” 

“ I don’t think it feels at all, not like it really is,” 
said Hazie. “ It’s awful not to take it in, but I can’t ! 
I feel all in under it, just like I had a big thing upside 
down on my head, like a washtub.” 

83 



84 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ Gracious ! ” cried Maizie. “ But I know what 
you mean; I can’t make it seem so either. Maybe 
when we go down to Boston, and buy a whole lot of 
perfectly magnificent clothes, we’ll wake up. You 
know how kinder good you feel when you’ve got new 
shoes. We’d ought to feel our oats when we’re 
dressed in silks and satins.” 

“ Indeed I don’t feel good when I’ve got new 
shoes ! ” cried Taizie. “ But I guess we’ll take in 
what’s happened, Once we get our new clothes and go 
to living in our house.” 

“ Oh, for the love of Mike l” cried Daisy, with a 
sob in her throat that made her exclamation sound 
like anything rather than slang. “ Doesn’t that sound 
like ‘ Home, Sweet Home ’ by a chorus and a brass 
band?” 

The four girls went to Boston by the earliest train 
on the second day after the big yellow house beside 
the lake had been bought, their title to their property 
recorded, the mystery of check-writing taught them, 
and Mr. Dermot entrusted with their guidance until 
another could be found for the office. He was not 
willing to act as the twins’ guardian, being superin- 
tendent of Mr. Debbs’ mills. Mr. Carberry had de- 
parted for New York. Mrs. Deacon accompanied 
the girls to Boston, selected for the funny reason that 
she had no experience in fine raiment such as the 
double twins were seeking. Of course the kind girls’ 


THE QUARTETTE SINGS 85 

real reason for taking her was that she had so little 
pleasure. 

She looked more tired and shabby on the train than 
she did at home. Maizie and Daisy, sitting opposite 
to her and Taizie, while Hazie behaved in a dignified 
manner alone at a little distance from them, made a 
mental memorandum of what was to be bought for 
their landlady. 

The double twins returned after three days in Bos- 
ton, which must have been days full to over-flowing 
with business and pleasure. They returned with a 
trunk a-piece, filled with the results of their shopping, 
and boxes following them by express. They reported 
to Mr. Dermot the purchase of the car, its make hav- 
ing been decided upon before they started. It was to 
be brought up to Chagford by a man from the ware- 
rooms, testing it thoroughly on its trip. The twins 
were to find their chauffeur at home; they all called 
him a “ show-for,” evidently with an association of 
ideas that a car and its driver were striking belong- 
ings for the Coggs girls to boast. 

Mrs. Deacon came home transformed, but within 
bounds. She had prevented the girls from buying her 
half that they would have liked to give her, and 
the half she accepted she kept within the limits of 
what she considered suitable to a woman of her age 
and circumstances. 

But she came back with one desire of her heart 


86 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


gratified. She now possessed a good black silk gown, 
which she had been brought up to believe was the last 
utterance of elegant respectability, “ suitable for any 
occasion.” 

“ And if I should die,” she said solemnly, “ I’d have 
a good dress to bury me in, and that’s what I’ve al- 
ways felt bad that I didn’t have.” 

“ Great Scott, Mrs. Deacon! ” cried Taizie. “ We’d 
a million times liever buy you something giddy to 
dance in ! ” 

But though this speech sent the other three Coggs 
off into joyous laughter, Mrs. Deacon would not 
smile. 

“ I’m just as certain never to dance as I am to die ; 
the black silk’s better,” she said. The girls never could 
tell whether Mrs. Deacon saw a joke or not. 

The day after their return the double twins took 
possession of their new house. There was consider- 
able furniture in it, left by its unlucky builder when 
his crash of fortune came. It was furniture all gilt 
and tapestry covers and carvings. The twins regarded 
it with admiration, not to say awe, and, if it was not 
in good taste, no one could deny that it must have 
been an expensive purchase originally. The moving 
in was not a difficult performance. The trunks from 
Boston held almost all the double twins ’ worldly 
goods. 

Mr. Carberry had insisted upon a promise from the 


THE QUARTETTE SINGS 


87 


girls that they would get a reliable woman to live with 
them, one who would, at the same time, cook for them 
and be a guardian, pending more servants and the 
setting up of an organized household. 

“ How under the canopy shall we know how to treat 
her!” cried Taizie. “Think of us with somebody 
working for us! I’ll never in this world get on to 
treating her any way at all. I’ll be scared stiff for 
fear she’ll think I’m asking too much of her, or not 
asking as much as I’d ought, as long’s we’re paying 
her. Oh, my goodness gracious, ain’t it fierce learn- 
ing!" 

Maizie threw up her hands as she laughed, a trick 
of hers. 

“ And Mr. Carberry said she had to be pretty well 
along in years, and I’ve heard you had to call people 
working for you by their first names. Won’t you feel 
like a baked apple calling an old woman Lizzie, or 
whatever it is ? ” she asked. 

“ No. A baked apple ain’t fresh, and we’ll feel 
fresher’n the freshest air fund doing that,” said 
Daisy. 

“ Well, where’ll we get her to call her anything? ” 
inquired Hazie. 

This seemed a poser, but Hazie herself answered 
her own question. 

Going out to order a dray to take their possessions 
from Mrs. Deacon’s to the new house, Hazie came 


88 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


upon a colored woman balancing a basket of clothes 
upon her head. The basket was so large and the 
woman balanced it so skilfully, that Hazie was fasci- 
nated. She carefully stepped aside to avoid a col- 
lision, and the woman smiled on her with ample lips 
and gleaming teeth, eloquent of good temper. 

“ I won’t drop it, honey,” she said. “ You could 
bump into me like a batter lamb and I wouldn’t drop 
it,” she said. 

Although Hazie did not know that the woman 
meant a battering ram, there was something about the 
idea of a batter lamb bumping into any one that struck 
her fancy. 

“ Do you live anywhere ? ” she asked, laughing, and 
struck by a sudden inspiration, as well as by the col- 
ored woman’s simile. 

“ Lawsy-me, do I look like a happytant of just no- 
wheres ? ” inquired the woman, spreading her already 
vast bulk. “ ’Course I lives, Missy. Where’d I done 
this washin’ I’m fetchin’ home yere if I didn’t have 
a place for it? ” 

“ Well, I mean — Come and see my sisters, unless 
you think you’d rather be where you’re now than any- 
where else,” Hazie said. “ We’re looking for some 
one who can cook and live with us. I like you; you 
look good and funny.” 

“ For de good land’s sake ! ” exclaimed the woman. 
“ Either you’re plumb crazy, or else you’re one of dat 


THE QUARTETTE SINGS 89 

double set o’ twins the whole place’s talkin’ about, old 
Pete’ Debbses’ grandchillun ! ” 

“ Maybe we are crazy, but we’re the twins all 
right,” said Hazie. 

“ No, you ain’t crazy, if you’re them, but ’twould 
be crazy if any other lil’ girl just kind o’ stopped a 
wash-lady, promiscuous, an’ asked her would she come 
live with ’em. You all’s huntin’ round, as you may 
say. Now, I’ll jes’ tell you, honey, I ain’t so satisfac- 
tionary to myself as I might be. I ain’t got too much 
luck, an’ dat’s right! I’m lame. If you was to watch 
me you’d see I kind o’ jes’ gets along with one laig 
go-draggy like. I’m a self-respectubble colored lady, 
what anybody’ll speak up fer you ask ’bout me. But 
you don’t want such a big lady that’s lame workin’ 
for you ! ” 

“ Yes, we do; we do want you! ” cried Hazie, con- 
vinced on the instant that they did. “ The house’s 
big enough to put a steam roller at work in every 
room. And if you’re lame we sure do want you, 
’cause we’re going to try to give people part of our 
luck, if they haven’t much of their own. If you ain’t 
getting on so very good it shows you ought to come. 
We’re going in for great times, up there in our grand 
house. You’ll like it, and Maizie and Taizie and Daisy 
are great. Can you cook? What’d we call you?” 

Hazie suddenly remembered that would-be employ- 
ers should question applicants. 


90 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ My lawsy, massy me, can I cook? Can I cook! 
Well, chile, I ain’t boastin’, but I can come pretty near 
to beatin’. the Demonico, who, I take it, is another 
name for the Wicked One, at cookin’. If I wasn’t 
lame I could draw wages, I kin tell you ! My name’s 
Cleopatra Samaria Cantata Jinks. My maw give me 
plenty; she say names don’t cost nothin’, an’ they’s 
stylish. Cleopatra’s some kind o’ antique name. 
Samaria’s a Bible name; so’s Cantata. My maw use’ 
to say they done sing about Cantata — some kin to 
Queen Esther she was — the day ’fore I was born, an’ 
she heard ’em, so she name’ me that along with the 
rest. I likes Cleo myself, for short; folks I work for 
previous before now use’ call me Cantata; that name 
sort o’ please ’em. You kin call me jes’ what you like 
out of ’em; I lay my names on the table, like you 
might say, an’ you picks out which ever you like bes’, 
same’s tellin’ fortunes with cards, you might pick out 
ace o’ hearts for you’ wish card.” 

Cleopatra Samaria Cantata Jinks came to see the 
remaining three of the four twins and, coming, con- 
quered. They were instantly determined to take her 
when they saw that her lameness did compel her to 
extreme slowness of motion, which, combined with 
her elephantine size, would make her undesirable. 
These girls were so full of good intentions that it 
seemed to them their duty to give everybody who had 
any handicap a chance. When one considers, this 


THE QUARTETTE SINGS 


91 


was a beautiful way of remembering their own past 
hard times and proving gratitude for their betterment. 

But no sooner had they decided upon Cleopatra 
Samaria Cantata out of pity, than their virtue began 
to include its own reward, for they found her a char- 
acter, a deep well of fun, and rejoiced in her for their 
own sakes. 

The first day in the new house was wonderful to 
the twins. There never can be more than one first 
day of all in anything. After it, though the joy may 
continue, there is a gradual adjustment to the novelty, 
but that first day is the day of miracle; it brings its 
own delight, and the anticipation of all the days and 
years to follow it. The girls arose early. Each twin 
had her own bedroom and expanded in it, remember- 
ing the one crowded room of the New York tenement, 
the bedroom of all four, the living-room and kitchen 
as well. 

Maizie lay a while after waking and looked about 
her, at the high ceiling, the damask paper, the long 
windows, the fluttering lace curtains, for the windows 
were open in the heat of a warm May. She looked 
at the brass sconces with their china candles for gas, 
which seemed to her the perfection of ingenuity and 
beauty; at the cheval glass, the carved dressing-table, 
the roses in her velvet carpet, and her heart over- 
flowed. 

“ Oh, Lord/’ she said under her breath, “ I will be 


92 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


a good girl, IT1 honest try to be a good girl and divvy 
up with people down on their luck! And I’ll try to 
learn to talk right and act right to match it all.” 

It was a queer little prayerful promise, but there 
is no doubt that God would overlook the word 
“ divvy ” when it expressed a gratitude which too 
many fortunate ones quite forget to feel. 

The forenoon was spent hanging the new gowns in 
the spacious wardrobes of the dressing-rooms that 
opened out of each great chamber, and laying the 
other new garments in the drawers which they could 
not begin to fill. 

Cleopatra Samaria Cantata, whose name Maizie had 
contracted into C. S. C., hence Ceescy, came up to 
help with her admiration. This was a real help, for 
every one knows that new clothes need an admiring 
audience quite as much as a new play does. 

“ They’re awful magnificent,” said Ceescy, rolling 
her eyes, her arms akimbo. “ I don’t know’s I hardly 
ever see such magnificence. I shouldn’t think that 
Queen Sheba had such clothes when she was young 
like you.” 

Cleopatra Samaria Cantata was justified in this 
opinion. The double twins had gratified their long- 
ing to express their youth, set free from poverty, and 
had blossomed out in more colors than spring puts on 
after the bleak winter. 

“ They’re pretty nifty,” admitted Taizie, surveying 


THE QUARTETTE SINGS 93 

her own particular lot with the frankest pleasure. 
“ This is only some ; we’ll have a lot.” 

When the new gowns were hung in their places the 
interior of the wardrobes looked like a Japanese street 
in a festival. Colors as many and as brilliant as rows 
of Japanese paper lanterns fell together from succes- 
sive hooks, the shimmer of silks against the deep folds 
of velvet, the foam of laces dropping into the glisten 
of satins. 

The double twins went by twos, arms around each 
other, from room to room, from wardrobe to ward- 
robe, speechless with the delight of what they saw. 

At the last wardrobe they stood longest, because it 
was the last. 

No one spoke. Each girl rapturously pressed her 
linked mate, or pinched her gently to prove the reality 
of their seeing. 

At last Taizie spoke, a low utterance, barely above 
a whisper. 

“ Oh, gee ! ” she said. “ Oh, gee, oh, gee ! ” 

Ceescy called the twins to luncheon. She had 
proved her powers as a cook. 

If Delmonico, whom Ceescy called Demonico, at- 
tributing to him the skill of a demon, could surpass 
her, she was quite clever enough to keep any one from 
wishing for him. 

The big colored woman had served a luncheon to 
the four girls so good that it half frightened them to 


94 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


regard it as their own luncheon. It was embarrassing 
to be served by Ceescy, who, pending the finding of 
servants for the big establishment, acted both as cook 
and waitress. The double twins had an uneasy sense 
of “ putting on airs ” in being served for this first 
important meal in their own house; a feeling which 
was heightened by Ceescy’s liberal use of the impress- 
ive china which had been part of the house furnish- 
ing. 

After the ordeal of playing their part at their own 
table was over, the double twins wandered aimlessly 
out into the library, a library guiltless of books. 

“ Didn’t you always think a library was something 
you had to have cards to? ” asked Hazie of either of 
the others who chose to reply. “ I thought it was a 
thing where you could get books for nothing, if you 
went to night school, or something like that. I never 
knew it was a room in a house, did you ? ” 

“ Search me ! ” said Daisy. “ I don’t see any books 
around. Maybe they took them off when they went. 
Maybe the man that built this house was going to 
have a library for the mill hands, like we want to fix 
up nice things for ’em. And there’s the drawing- 
room! What, under the sun, do you suppose they 
went and built a big room like that for and made it 
so grand just to draw in? ” 

“ That’s another name for a parlor, I believe,” said 
Maizie. “ I don’t believe it means pitcher drawing. 


THE QUARTETTE SINGS 


95 


Maybe it’s where they had folks to tea, and so they 
named it for where they put the tea to draw. And 
didn’t you see the library over to Miss Allaire’s? We 
went in there the first night we was over. There’s 
heaps and stacks of books in cases all around, don’t 
you remember? That’s a library; a room where they 
keep their books, when they know enough to buy 
books. Say, girls, sometimes it just gets me, the 
things we ain’t ! ’Course we’re only starting, but, say, 
ain’t it a long ways to go! I’m just as stuck on the 
fun and the clothes and all as ever I was, just as much 
as any of us, but it’s beginning to soak into me that 
it’s up to us to learn things, and, jiminy, what a lot 
there is, if you once open your eyes — ears, too!” 

"We’ll get there, Eli!” said Taizie cheerfully. 
“ Somebody’s driving in. It’s a two-seater, brown 
horse, awful nice man driving, lady in behind and a 
girl — ” 

“ Ginger! It’s Nancy Porter! Must be her mother 
and the doctor with her ! ” cried Daisy, looking over 
Taizie’s shoulder. “ You’re all as mussed up as you 
can be! I ain’t much better, but some; I’ll let ’em 
in. We’ve got to get used to shedding old clothes and 
wearing them new ones right along.” 

The other three girls fled, and Daisy went to the 
door in a flustered state of mind. She found on the 
steps Nancy and her mother; the doctor was driving 
away, but he saluted Daisy with a wave of his hand, 


96 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


raising his hat and revealing a great shaggy head and 
a face so full of wisdom and kindness and goodness 
that Daisy stared after him, wishing that he would 
not go. 

Nancy was smiling up at her with her sweet face 
wreathed in the smiles that no one in all the Chagfords 
could resist, for “ the doctor’s little girl,” as she was 
called, was beloved by every one. Beside Nancy stood 
a lady whose first effect was simple goodness and lov- 
ableness, but whose face, on a second glance, was beau- 
tiful. She had soft brown hair, simply arranged, her 
tinting was as fresh as a girl’s, her lips firm, yet 
sweet, her eyes under their dark lashes alight with 
that beautiful look that only the one word “ moth- 
erly ” describes. 

“This is my mother — ” Nancy stopped; she did 
not know by which name she should present this spe- 
cial Coggs twin to her mother. 

“ I’m Daisy,” its owner said. She led the way into 
the drawing-room of which she was exceedingly 
proud, although its name did puzzle her. 

“ I’ll call the bunch,” Daisy said and disappeared ; 
she had no desire to support the burden of a call alone. 

After a while all four Coggs girls came down. 
Daisy had changed her gown in the meantime and 
there was no difference between them in the degree 
of splendor which they presented. They were dressed 
in princess gowns, no two alike in color, each made 


THE QUARTETTE SINGS 


97 


from a light and bright silk, or satin, trimmed with 
velvet and lace. The twins wore a great deal of stri- 
king jewelry; rings flashed on hands that had not 
had time yet to soften and whiten after the hard work 
they had bravely done all their brief existence, chains 
dangled and stick pins stuck in all possible — and im- 
possible — places. 

Mrs. Porter was so sympathetic to all young things 
that she understood this gorgeousness to be an ex- 
pression of the double twins’ joy in no longer being 
obliged to look shabby, a delight in having, like the 
delight of a baby set down in a field of bloom, gather- 
ing every bright flower-head within reach of her tiny 
hands for the joy of abundance. 

Mrs. Porter’s greeting jumped ahead of Nancy’s 
presentation of the twins to her. 

Though Nancy called each name, she left it to the 
girls to attach themselves to the right one, for she 
could not do it for them. 

In a few moments, which Mrs. Porter skilfully 
bridged, these girls felt perfectly at home with her, 
sure of her sympathy, and were all talking at once 
of what had been done, what was to be done with 
their new wealth. 

“ We got a car when we was to Boston,” announced 
Daisy. 

“My dear! You didn’t buy a car without some 
one to advise you ! ” cried Mrs. Porter. 


98 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ Surest thing you know! ” cried Taizie jubilantly. 
“ Ain’t it the greatest ever? But it wa’n’t so much 
to do as it sounds.” 

“ No,” Maizie took up the story. “ Mr. Carberry 
and Mr. Dermot told us which one they’d get, and 
Mr. Dermot give us a card to a man he knew in the 
store where they keep ’em ; so all we had to do was to 
see which size we wanted and what color, and that’s 
dead easy. There’s a gentleman they keep to run ’em 
going to bring it here about to-morrow. It’s grey, 
kind o’ silvery. He said he’d be able to try it on the 
way and see it hadn’t anything wrong about it. We’ve 
got to get a show-for.” 

“ I’ll bet anything I’ll run it myself by and by! ” 
declared Taizie. “ Oh, say, Mrs. Porter, we’re crazy 
when we think about it all ! Straight goods, wouldn’t 
any one be ? ” 

“We went to Boston and bought us clothes,” said 
Maizie, regarding her gown with a satisfaction that 
she tried to disguise. Then she glanced at Mrs. Por- 
ter and Nancy, and the simplicity of their attire, the 
soft, refined colors they wore, their lack of any orna- 
ments but an old-fashioned pearl and amethyst brooch 
which fastened Mrs. Porter’s collar, and a thread-like 
chain, from which hung a small moonstone ball, 
around Nancy’s neck, and a misgiving came over her. 

“ We’ve got to get servants, so Mr. Carberry said,” 
Taizie resumed. “ He made us bring a colored lady 


THE QUARTETTE SINGS 


99 


— or he made us get some one and Hazie found her 

— from over to the Falls. We’ve got to hunt a bunch. 
We don’t know how we’ll act with ’em! But we don’t 
feel so dumb with Cleopatra Samaria Cantata as we 
expected — got a fit, Nancy?” she interrupted her- 
self. 

At the sound of these remarkable syllables Nancy 
had fallen over sidewise in her chair and was hanging 
over its arm in an agony of laughter. 

Mrs. Porter, too, laughed, and the four twins joined 
her. 

“ Ain’t it the limit of a name ! ” Daisy gasped. 
“ We don’t notice it so much now, but ain’t it the 
limit! We call her Ceescy for short.” 

“ Dear little, queer little quartette ! ” cried Mrs. 
Porter. “You are only big children; two of you 
are but a little more than a year older than my Nancy! 
Why not have a simpler household at first, not use all 
the house, and so require fewer to do its work? I 
have but one woman to do my work. Letty Hetty 
is rather a friend than a servant. I’ve found that it 
makes a great deal of work — of another sort — for 
the housekeeper who employs many. Don’t you think 
it would be better for you to practise housekeeping 
a while, before you launch out into a large way of 
doing it ? ” 

“ Oh, say, Mrs. Porter, don’t advise us to cut out 
all the spread,” Daisy implored her. “ We’ve been 


100 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


doing without enough butter to spread, honest! So 
wouldn’t you want to plunge in, if you was us?” 

“ Indeed I should ! ” cried Mrs. Porter, so heartily 
that Daisy patted her before she thought. “ I 
wouldn’t prevent you from spreading, if I could ! All 
I meant was I would not try to do everything at once ; 
I’d begin with a street piano for my march, for in- 
stance, and march to a brass band after I had learned 
the step.” She smiled at the girls, sure that this 
illustration would appeal to them. 

It did, but her motherliness appealed to them more. 
Maizie, who had been watching her thoughtfully for 
some time, spoke. 

“ It’s the queerest thing, but getting rich’s just like 
wearing spectacles. There don’t one thing look like 
it did to me. I can hear how we talk. We went to 
school off and on, mostly off, when we was little, and 
we made it off for good after we got to be ten, only 
just enough going to dodge the school cop. We was 
in the Fourth Reader, ’cause we are all awful quick at 
figgering, and that puts you ahead, but, honest to 
goodness, we can’t read right off, decent, yet! We’ve 
got to learn. I’m going to learn, and drag the other 
three Coggses into it, if I die doing it! We’ve got to 
copy, so we’ve got to look out for something to copy. 
Hazie and I see it plainest, but the rest are getting 
their eyes open, too. You wouldn’t — would you 
show us a thing or two, once in a while, Mrs. Por- 


THE QUARTETTE SINGS 101 

ter ? ” Maizie’s hesitation, the wistful look on her 
jolly face was attractive. 

“ Indeed I will ! I’ll show you anything at any 
time that I can ! Come to me whenever you like, day 
or night, and let me help you out. I’ll tell you! We 
will make a bargain on the spot! Nancy and I — the 
doctor is always part of Nancy and me, so this means 
Doctor Porter, too — will adopt you for our own 
special property, and you shall adopt us. We will 
work together to make you both safe and happy. 
Years hence, you nice little sparrows, you will realize 
how easily you could have been trapped and killed at 
this time. For it’s by no means all play to have 
wealth, and a great deal can go wrong with unpro- 
tected children like you, who have suddenly received 
this great power for good or ill. So is it a bargain? 
Will you take Nancy and her mother for your real 
friends and trust them — and the big doctor whom 
you are sure to love — to love you and stand by 
you ? ” 

Mrs. Porter’s hands were held out at the end of 
her speech, but her motherly eyes spoke a more irre- 
sistible persuasion. The double twins, who had never 
more than dimly guessed what motherhood was like, 
fell on her, all four at once, with a whoop of joy and 
hugged her breathless. There were tears in their 
honest eyes, but they laughed as they always did. 

“Will we? Will we take you and Nancy?” cried 


102 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

Taizie, swinging from Mrs. Porter to Nancy, and 
crushing her slender little body in a bear-like hug. 

“ Well, you watch us! ” cried Hazie, but Mrs. Por- 
ter could not “ watch them/’ for her hat was knocked 
over her eyes. 

“ Oh, you peach ! ” sighed Maizie. » 

“ You’re our biggest piece of luck yet,” declared 
Daisy, and she was entirely right. 

The doctor was waiting, so after this ratification of 
the bargain Mrs. Porter and Nancy went away. The 
doctor looked amazed, as well he might, when the 
double twins appeared on the piazza seeing his wife 
and little girl off. But, though his eyebrows went up 
with a comical glance at his wife for comment on the 
extreme glory in which “ the ladies of the lake,” as 
he dubbed them, were arrayed, he understood Mrs. 
Porter and Nancy’s wordless telegram to him that 
they thoroughly liked and approved these queer Chag- 
ford acquisitions. 

He waved his hand which held the whip that he 
never used on Tonic, his horse, and called to them : 

“ I’m coming to see you myself in a day or so, so 
be prepared for the worst! My instruments will be 
sharp and ready, and I shall amputate, or dictate, 
whatever I see fit.” 

The doctor had a leonine head. His raised hat 
disclosed a thick crop of iron grey hair. His voice 
was full and rich, a deep voice, yet most gentle in 


THE QUARTETTE SINGS 


103 


tone. His face was, as Daisy murmured, “ splendid/' 
a face stamped with thought, experience of men, 
books and life, above all with simple goodness, 
strength and sweetness, unselfishness. 

After the Porters had driven out of the long drive- 
way, past the painted monstrosities in iron, to repre- 
sent bronze deers, dogs and a horse, which the Coggs 
girls admired tremendously and which studded their 
lawn, the double twins stood for a few moments 
quiet, almost wistful. 

“ That's a dear little thing, that Nancy,” said Hazie 
at last. 

“ She’s awful quiet now, but her eyes just shut up 
laughing, and she looks terrible bright. I think she’s 
a peach,” said Daisy. 

“ I wonder why she wouldn’t be, with a mother like 
that! Say, ain’t she warming, girls, kind o’ like a 
fireplace ? ” Maizie said slowly. “ And such voices ! 
Did you catch on? Just as soft and nice as singing. 
You wouldn’t think plain talk could sound so nice. 
Nancy’s voice sounds like some kind o’ fluke, or what- 
ever that is they play in orkresters, all silvery sweet, 
like. And Mrs. Porter’s! You’d think she was stro- 
king you! And did you hear the way the doctor 
spoke? His voice sounds like — like the best coffee 
tastes; warms you and makes you feel good. Oh, 
say, what’s the use? You could buy all the jewelry 
and cars they is and you wouldn’t be like that ! ” 


104 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


There was silence for a moment as the four twins 
pensively considered their lack. Then Taizie revived. 
She turned to go into the house, saying: 

“ There’s heaps o’ use. We can catch things easy. 
We’ll hire a teacher and we’ll be copy-cats to beat the 
band. We’ve caught money; I guess we can catch 
on; it’s easier ’n catching money! We won’t be Por- 
ters, but we’ll be staving Coggses! Haven’t we got 
the Porters for our own; didn’t they say so? Gee, 
but I’m crazy about them, and so are you all, I see 
that. It’s easy enough to copy folks when you’re 
crazy about ’em. Brace up, Maizie ! ” 

With which Taizie, the liveliest of the lively doub- 
lets, went into the palatial residence which was now 
the Coggs’ own. 


CHAPTER VI 

THE HONK OF THE HORN 

OU don’t suppose it’s come and us 
not up?” cried Hazie from her 
room, as she sat erect in bed. 

“ That’s what it has ! ” Taizie 
called back to her, and Hazie heard 
the thud of two bare soles strike the floor, and knew 
that Taizie had swung herself out of bed by the head 
rods and had gone to the window to make sure that 
their fears were realized. 

An automobile horn was honk-honking in the drive- 
way, though it was not yet half-past six. All the 
previous day the double twins had done nothing what- 
ever but walk from window to window, out of the 
door to the piazza, down the driveway to scan the 
road, back again and then out again, da capo, all the 
livelong day, watching for the first gleam of their 
new car’s shining grey paint, which was due to ap- 
pear before night. 

It did not appear, and the twins had gone to bed 
badly disappointed. Now, before they were up, the 
105 



106 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


car had arrived, depriving them of the pleasure upon 
which they had counted, of seeing it draw near, hear- 
ing its horn as it wound around the lake road, being 
drawn up in an array of all four to receive it when 
it should turn in at the driveway gate. 

“ Botheration ! ” exclaimed Daisy, drawing the lace 
curtain into a bunch before her and peeping through 
it at the car just below the window. “ I wanted to 
see it coming ! ” 

“ So did I,” said Maizie, “ but I suppose it’s pretty 
near enough for the Coggs twins to own a car, have 
it get here any old way ! We’ll be down in a minute,” 
she called, throwing open her window, which was so 
situated that it allowed her to speak to the chauffeur 
without being seen. 

The four girls made a record in dressing that morn- 
ing, Daisy scoring above the others by three minutes 
less time consumed. They put on one-piece gowns, 
low shoes, to save extra buttoning and nearly pulled 
their hair out, jerking the comb through its tawny 
snarls. Daisy and Taizie, who were ready first, hon- 
orably waited for the other two before going down. 
It was not above two minutes, but sometimes one 
minute holds sixty greatly elongated seconds. 

The four rushed down the stairs and fell against 
the door in a bunch, tugging frantically to get it open, 
retarding the operation. The lock stuck and so did 
the bolt. 


THE HONK OF THE HORN 107 


“You’ll get a dose!” said Maizie through her 
teeth, meaning a dose of oil, though no locks could 
reasonably be supposed to work with four hands upon 
them. 

The door flew open violently, when it did open, 
revealing the new car just in front of it. 

“ Oh, there you are ! ” exclaimed Daisy foolishly, 
as if she had been expecting to find the car elsewhere, 
or something else. 

“ I thought I’d get through last night,” said the 
chauffeur, getting down, “ but it was useless to rush 
her, so I put up twenty-five miles away and started 
a little after five this morning. She’s all right, Miss 
Coggs. You’ll like her; I can guarantee she’s per- 
fect.” 

“ We like her now,” said Maizie, accepting the 
man’s pronoun for the car. “We’d like it if you’d 
stay and run her.” 

“ Oh, I’m to stop over a day or so, to start you and 
demonstrate her for you, but then I’m to get back to 
the garage. We’re selling cars like bargain-counter 
gloves this spring,” said the chauffeur. “ Where am 
I to put her? If you’ll send some one, or tell me 
where it is, I’ll run her into your garage.” 

The twins looked at one another in dismay. Where 
was their garage? What was their garage, for that 
matter ? 

Maizie was quick at guessing, and her faculties 


108 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


were getting sharpened in the direction of new words 
and new ways. She surmised that a garage must 
be a kind of automobile stable, if one “ ran her 
into it” 

“ We haven’t one, not a regular one,” said Maizie, 
avoiding the word of uncertain pronunciation, to her 
sisters’ admiration. “ But there’s a big barn on the 
place that’ll hold her all right. You might run 
her in there. It’s right around the driveway, back 
of the house. We’ll have some breakfast pretty 
soon.” 

The chauffeur touched his hat, getting into the car 
and starting “ her ” to the barn. 

Daisy danced a brief jig of joy the moment it had 
rounded the curve. 

“You’re getting there, Maize! You answered up 
like a perfect lady ! Bet he didn’t see you didn’t have 
a sign of a gruje, or whatever it is, in your head! ” 
she cried. 

Maizie swung herself into the house with pretended 
disdain. 

“ On my father’s fine estate on Staten Island we 
grew grujes by the acre,” she said. 

And the other three Coggs girls followed her, quite 
bent over with laughter. 

Breakfast was an embarrassing ordeal, but it was 
gone through with fairly well. 

The chauffeur proved to have a justifiable appetite 


THE HONK OF THE HORN 109 

after his early drive, so that his fourfold hostess lost 
fear of being criticized and managed quite well. 

“ I suppose you young ladies will want to be going 
out right away?” the chauffeur suggested. “Or 
maybe your mother — or an aunt, is it, who looks 
after you ? — will come down soon and you’ll wait 
for her? ” 

The double twins laughed gaily. “ We haven’t any 
mother, and there isn’t an aunt on the place! Nobody 
looks after us but us; we’re all there is, but we don’t 
need any more,” cried Taizie. “ Sure, we’d like to 
go out just as soon as you want to take us. Do you 
have to fix up the car, or — or — would you like to 
see the place, or — or smoke?” added Taizie, trying 
her best to be polite, and considerably at loss as to 
the form of hospitality they ought to offer. 

The chauffeur looked thoroughly surprised at this 
announcement of the total of the household, but he 
laughed and his eyes softened, as he regarded the four 
copies of the Coggs design of a twin. He knew noth- 
ing of their peculiar history, but he was beginning to 
estimate them accurately as he had little girls of his 
own. 

“ Bless your heart, miss, I don’t smoke, and I’ll see 
the place enough while I’m showing you what kind 
of a prize you’ve got in your car. I’ve nothing to do 
to her; she’s all right, ready for her next trip. I’ll 
take you around Chagford, or we’ll make a special 


110 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


trip somewhere, go to Haverhill, or some place, say 
about twenty, or twenty-five miles away, just as you 
like.” 

The twins drew in a long, collective breath. Vast 
expanses of the world and pleasure stretched out be- 
fore them at these magic words. 

“ I guess, maybe, we’d better run around Chagford 
to-day,” said Maizie, trying to speak carelessly. “ If 
you can stay to-morrow we could go — there, where- 
ever it was, and maybe take Mrs. Porter and Nancy 
along.” 

“ I’ll be going to-morrow afternoon, Miss Coggs, 
but till then I’m yours obediently,” said the chauffeur. 
“ I’ll go and get the car out, and maybe feed her oil 
and water, while you are getting your automobile 
coats and bonnets on.” 

“ Oh, we’ve got ’em ! ” cried Hazie, betraying, to 
the other twins’ chagrin, that she thought the chauf- 
feur might suspect them of not being properly 
equipped for their new glory. 

The double twins had provided themselves with 
automobiling garments when they were in Boston, 
after they had selected the car. They hurried away 
now to don them. They each had a long silk coat, at 
least five years older in style than the wearers’ years; 
one wine color, one dark green, one blue, the fourth 
light brown. With the coats were bonnets, close, yet 
contriving to look grown-up and striking. The veils 


THE HONK OF THE HORN 111 


over them seemed to spread upon the wind more than 
ordinary veils, but then these four young girls always 
seemed to affect everything they did and wore em- 
phatically, heightening the effect. 

The new automobile was a touring car of seven- 
passenger capacity. The generous twins had decided 
that they should want to share the pleasure of the car 
and that when they were spending so much for one 
“ a thousand more wouldn’t matter.” Having said 
which, with a fine air of carelessness, Taizie, the 
speaker, had danced a breakdown with her head on 
one side, her skirts airily lifted, to express her sense 
of the inexpressible humor of a thousand dollars being 
a matter of indifference to the Coggs twins. 

When the new car in all the beauty of its long, 
slender lines, its swift, steady motion, its shining sil- 
very paint, its glossy maroon cushions, showing most 
in the middle seats where Hazie sat in solitary gran- 
deur, for Taizie insisted on sitting by the driver while 
the other two tried their best to fill the wide rear seat 
and n»t bounce too much, when this splendid new out- 
fit appeared in Chagford it created a sensation. The 
Coggs twins were the subject of conversation; tales 
of their funny sayings and doings went from lip to 
lip; everybody liked them, but everybody found them 
funny, and not a few took melancholy pleasure in 
predicting their ruin, unguarded, untrained, with im- 
mense wealth in their hands and more coming to them. 


112 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Now that they drove through the various Chagfords 
in this “ more than Oriental splendor ” people stared 
at them, and reported to those who had not seen them 
that “ the Coggs twins had bought them a car.” 

Luncheon was hurried in order to make the after- 
noon as long as possible for driving. Daisy said that 
it was “ kinder nice not to be afraid you’d tire the 
thing/’ 

In the afternoon the double twins persuaded Miss 
Belinda Allaire, Mrs. Porter and Nancy to drive with 
them. The big car took them swiftly through lovely 
country, turning toward home not far from the New 
Hampshire state line; it drove even more steadily 
than before, with three of the Coggs girls in the mid- 
dle seats, Taizie still beside the chauffeur and their 
guests in the rear seat. 

The chauffeur was summoned back to Boston by a 
telegram which arrived during the afternoon. “ Re- 
turn at once. Demonstrate big sale negotiating,” it 
read. 

The chauffeur handed the telegram over to the 
twins. “ Orders from headquarters,” he said with 
brevity like the telegram’s. “ You see, I can’t take 
you out to-morrow, as we planned, but you have been 
shown what a good car you have and you must get 
a chauffeur of your own, in any case.” 

“ But we want to go again right off ! ” protested 
Hazie, almost ready to cry. “ It’s awful to have your 


THE HONK OF THE HORN 113 


own car and just taste it and then have to wait and 
wait to go out in it ! ” 

The chauffeur’s time was not his own, so there was 
no use in bewailing his going. There were four faces 
more downcast than one would have supposed Coggs 
faces could be around the table of the bookless library 
after supper, and Maizie had a headache from her 
unaccustomed rapid driving through miles of strong 
breeze. 

“ Oh, gracious, I didn’t know a red-head could ache 
so hard ! ” she groaned, supporting hers in her hands, 
her elbows on the arm of the big chair in which she 
sat curled sidewise. 

“ A red-head ought to have a particularly feverish 
headache, my dear,” said a voice, and Maizie faced 
around with a jump to see Doctor Porter, who had 
been admitted by Ceescy, unheard by the twins, stand- 
ing inside the doorway, pulling off his gloves and 
smiling at her. 

“ Did I frighten you, new neighbors ? ” the doctor 
asked. “ Nancy wanted to come with me, but her 
mother needed her to-night, so I’ve ventured alone. 
I am Nancy Porter’s father, and I have come to thank 
the four girls who gave Mrs. Porter and Nancy such 
a pleasant afternoon.” 

“ Pleased to see you,” murmured the twins in an 
embarrassed quartette. 

“ How can you be sure which one has the head- 


114 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


ache?” the doctor asked. “ You are so wonderfully 
alike! Or have you all headaches from that splendid 
new car ? ” 

“ No, sir; Maizie’s got a headache,” said Hazie, at 
whom he chanced to look last. 

“ I have something with me, in my pocket, that 
will relieve a car headache, if you will take it in water 
and sit, or, better, lie, quiet for a short time,” said 
the doctor, producing a small phial of powder. 

Hazie ran away to get the water and a spoon, and, 
before she knew it, Maizie had taken the remedy and 
was tucked away on a couch in a darker corner of 
the room where she “ could be seen and not heard,” 
Doctor Porter said. “ Which was the olden prescrip- 
tion for making a child well-behaved.” 

The double twins knew Doctor Porter from the in- 
stant he spoke to them. It was his great gift to win 
instant trust and liking. The twins’ confidence went 
out to him, just as it had to his wife, and they began 
to chatter to him easily and without reserve. 

“Ain’t it fierce?” demanded Taizie. “We was 
going out to-morrow morning and now the gentleman 
that brought the car here’s got to go back first pop! 
And we can’t do a single thing but go out and look 
at the thing till we get a show- for to take us, and we 
don’t know any more where to look for a show-for ’n 
the dead ! ” 

“ I have one in my pocket,” said the doctor gravely. 


THE HONK OF THE HORN 115 


“ I happened to have the headache medicine in my 
actual coat-pocket, but I came purposely to tell you 
that I have a chauffeur for you in my figurative 
pocket. I know the very man of men for you to em- 
ploy. His name is Elijah, Elijah Riggs. His brother, 
Stephen, has been looking after my horse, Tonic, and 
me and my affairs for years. Elijah is a skilled me- 
chanic and has learned to run a car perfectly ; he is as 
trustworthy as he can be, in every way; just the per- 
son to take out four such youthful ladies as the Coggs 
girls. I urge you to let me send Elijah here and to 
engage him, for he will be every bit as faithful as old 
dog Tray, and there are not many chauffeurs to whom 
Mrs. Porter and I would care to see children like you 
entrusting yourselves.” 

“ Oh, say, don’t that sound good ! ” cried Maizie 
from her couch, in irrepressible satisfaction. “ Not 
Mr. Riggs, though goodness knows we can’t wait to 
get a show-for, but you saying you and Mrs. Porter 
would worry about us — or that’s what it means, ain’t 
it? It’s awful good to think you’ve got somebody 
standing back like that, thinking ! ” 

“ It sure does sound good, Maize,” the twin agreed. 
“ And we sure will take Mr. Riggs, if he’ll come. 
Hurry up, Maizie, and get over enough of the head- 
ache to tell Doctor Porter what we said about — you 
know ! ” Daisy ended with significant nods and 
scowls. 


116 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ I guess I can now/’ said Maizie, rising slowly 
and carefully, not to bring her head into its 
usual position too suddenly. She came forward 
slowly and the doctor arose to place a chair for her, 
one that would support the back of her head, for, as 
she advanced, Maizie announced that she “ felt awful 
wobbly.” 

“ We was thinking, Doctor Porter,” . Maizie said, 
as her sisters sat looking hard at her, waiting for her 
to speak. “We saw you, and we’re clean gone on 
Mrs. Porter and Nancy.” 

“ Thank you ; so am I,” said the doctor without 
a smile. “ I have felt that way about Mrs. Porter 
for a quarter of a century, and just as much so toward 
her daughter for nearly thirteen years — as long as I 
have known them both.” 

Maizie nodded, laughing, and all four pairs of eyes 
twinkled back at the doctor in response to the twinkle 
which he permitted himself at the end of his non- 
sense. 

“ Sure,” said Maizie, approving. “ Well, you 
know, we’d ought to have a guardeen, or some one, 
some man, to look after us. Peter Debbs ain’t doing 
a thing in the grandfather line. He just chucks us 
the money and says: ‘ Go ahead, any old way.’ We 
don’t want to do it; we want to go ahead the best 
way. You wouldn’t want — you couldn’t — would it 
be asking too much — ” 


THE HONK OF THE HORN 117 


Maizie halted, seized with an unforeseen sense of 
the impossibility of asking what she had set out to 
ask. 

“ Be our guardeen,” Taizie blurted out, and then 
stopped, too, frightened — for a Coggs ! 

The doctor hesitated, frowning, but a thoughtful, 
not a displeased frown. He smiled very kindly at the 
four who interested all Chagford so greatly, but who 
appealed to the doctor and his wife, as all young things 
appealed to them, with a desire to stand between their 
helplessness and the knocks that life might give them. 

“ My dear little duplicates ! ” the doctor said, “ if 
you think there’s no one better — ” 

To every one’s surprise, most of all to her own, 
Hazie interrupted him with a little impetuous cry. 

“ There ain’t any one better, no man ; we knew it 
that first day when you waved your hand to us, when 
you brought Mrs. Porter and Nancy here,” she said. 

“ Then I’ll gladly be your guardian, not before the 
law, you know, but just between ourselves,” said the 
good doctor, putting out his hand to pat Hazie’s 
shoulder. “ It shall be understood between us that 
I am to advise you and serve you, that you are to 
come to me with all your little bothers, just as Nancy 
would, and that when you think the dose I prescribe 
for that sort of welfare is not quite the flavor you 
would choose, you will swallow it, nevertheless, just 
as Maizie took my headache prescription. You will 


118 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


play I am a sort of adopted old father and I will play 
that you are my adopted twin daughters. But all this 
is to be quite between ourselves. Is that the arrange- 
ment you had in mind, but, evidently, feared to sug- 
gest? ” 

The doctor’s eyes were full of fatherly kindness as 
they rested on these girls, who were wholly alone in 
the world, and yet only a little older than his dear 
child, whose life had unfolded amid the most devoted 
and wisest love. 

Something new and unknown to herself leaped up 
in Taizie, who was the gayest, the most headlong of 
the four. She plunged at Doctor Porter and caught 
him around the neck with an enthusiasm that fright- 
ened her, later, to remember. She laid her head on 
the doctor’s shoulder; her brilliant hair, standing out 
in all directions, tickled him dreadfully, but he would 
not have betrayed it for the world. 

“ It’s heaps more than we wanted to ask, heaps and 
heaps, because you say it so different ! ” she cried. 
“ You’re just the dearest ever, and we never had the 
least speck of a father! If ever we can do something 
for you, you watch us, that’s all ! ” 

“ Well, well, little Taizie,” said the doctor, patting 
her, as he patted Nancy, and venturing to smooth 
back her obstreperous hair by way of a caress. “ You 
shall have a speck of a father now, and as to doing 
something for me, there’ll be plenty of chance, plenty. 


THE HONK OF THE HORN 119 


I’m longing to build a hospital here and you shall help. 
We’ve settled a good deal in a short time — -Elijah 
Riggs as chauffeur, me as guardian, Maizie’s headache 

— I hope? How is it,' Maizie? ” 

“ Gone,” said Maizie. “ When’ll Mr. Riggs come ? 
My, but we’re thankful to you, Doctor Porter! ” 

“ I’ll send Elijah here to-morrow. I’ll engage him 
for you, so it will be settled when you see him,” said 
the doctor. “ And, actually, I had forgotten the 
message from Nancy! She is going to ask a few 
friends to meet you next Tuesday. There are her 
friends, Mimi Hunt and Doris Clark, nice girls. And 
Amabel Willis, the beauty of Chagford, and her sweet 
elder sister, Louise, and a gypsy-like child, Cordelia 
Tilden, called Cord, younger than Nancy, and dear 
little Grandma Emerson, who is actual grandmother 
to no one and adopted grandmother to every one — 
these are coming to be made acquainted with the 
double twins, so please come and make new friends. 
Nancy and her mother — and your new-old guardian 

— would like to have you know nice people, my dears, 
and these are all nice people, each in her own way.” 

“ It scares us green,” said Daisy candidly, “ but 
we’ll be there.” 

“ Please thank Nancy,” added Maizie, which small 
touch of politeness showed that she was beginning to 
learn the ways of her new world. 

The doctor left the house with a lasting affection 


120 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

established between himself and the four warm- 
hearted girls, who were unusually quick to feel grati- 
tude and repay kindness with devotion. 

Almost at once the twins began to make prepara- 
tions for their first appearance in Chagford society. 
There is no saying what costumes they might have 
planned to wear had not Nancy made a point of drop- 
ping in on them for a hurried visit, in the course of 
which she conveyed a welcome hint to them that all 
white would be the prettiest thing for an afternoon 
party in June. 

So the girls arrayed themselves in four white gowns 
which were too elaborate, but still made them look 
girlish, and threw into relief the bright tints of their 
hair and cheeks. Wrapped in the decidedly grown-up 
motor coats the double twins got into the car, all in 
its party dustlessness and with Elijah, as calmly ready 
to take them to Doctor Porter’s as if a party did not 
matter. 

Elijah was a real treasure. The double twins called 
him “ Mr. Riggs,” unable to bring themselves to the 
self-confidence required to address their staid, past- 
forty chauffeur as Elijah. He was a skilful driver, 
incapable of recklessness, and he was so respectable 
and so kind that, under his guardianship, the four 
young girls needed no chaperon for their youthful 
freedom in the big car. 

When they got to the doctor’s “ the party was 


THE HONK OF THE HORN 121 


there/’ as Hazie said. It was waiting for their com- 
ing with extreme interest. 

Nancy took the Coggs girls up-stairs to set right the 
damage done their hair by the big hats they had worn, 
feeling that an automobile bonnet was not the thing 
to wear to a party. Nancy looked at them anxiously. 
She was not one bit afraid of what Mimi Hunt, Doris 
Clark, nor the sweet elder Willis girl, Louise, would 
think of them, but Amabel Willis was “ sniffylofti- 
cal/ , as Doris called it, and Nancy was afraid she 
might feel called upon to snub these rough diamonds, 
whom the Porters recognized for genuine gems, 
though they weren’t polished — yet. 

Nancy saw that the white gowns were wrought and 
trimmed into agony and that the twofold twins wore 
an amazing amount of jewelry, but, on the whole, they 
looked better than she had seen them, so merry, whole- 
some and affectionate that her heart went out to them, 
the more that she thought she saw a shade of anxiety 
underneath their breezy self-confidence. Nancy 
hugged the twin nearest her on the impulse of the 
moment and saw afterward that it was Taizie. Tai- 
zie hugged her back again, with interest, then they all 
five went down-stairs. 

The double twins heard themselves presented to the 
three girls, Mimi, Doris and Amabel, and to Miss 
Willis, after Mrs. Porter had met them with her own 
convincing hospitality. 


122 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

Taizie, because she felt embarrassed, and knew that 
her sisters did, plunged straightway into praise of the 
new “ autymobile ” and of “ Mr. Riggs.” She offered 
on the spot to take all of Nancy’s guests driving in it, 
and told Louise Willis to “ cut out the Miss ” when 
Louise used the prefix in speaking to her. 

All the girls looked amused, but not unkindly so, 
except Amabel, and she fulfilled Nancy’s worst fears 
by speaking to the Coggs with frigid politeness, at 
the same time most impolitely trying to lead them on 
to betray their deficiencies. Nancy’s cheeks were on 
fire, sensitive, sweet Nancy, who was endowed with 
tiny nerves in all directions to feel other people’s 
hurts, and who would as soon have cut off her hand 
as disregard any one’s feelings. 

A tiny little old lady arrived later, whom Nancy 
ran to greet with evident relief, hailing her as 
Grandma Emerson. She was a dear little old lady, 
with pink cheeks and a sprightly manner, and a smile 
that not only lit up her porcelain- white face, but lit 
up the room. After she had come, and Rick Lover- 
ing came home and brought his violin to play for 
them, the party became more lively. Rick played as 
if he were inspired ; he was more than merely talented 
musically; he was likely to become a great violinist. 

They danced in spite of the heat. Grandma Emer- 
son actually helped Maizie master steps which she did 
not know, but which she picked up at once. 


THE HONK OF THE HORN 123 


Another girl had come late to the party, a small, 
elfin creature, as dark as a gypsy, thin, overflowing 
with restless energy and mischief. This was Cordelia 
Tilden, whom they all called Cord. The Coggs girls 
discovered that she was an orphan who lived with 
two old sisters in the village and “ helped around,” 
going to school and being looked after in the simple 
fashion of which Chagford was still capable. 

The Coggs girls wondered sincerely why Amabel 
felt called upon to snub them, yet tolerated Cord; 
they decided that it was because Cord was younger 
than Nancy, which was as good a reason as another, 
perhaps. 

Cordie evidently considered the double twins as a 
gift direct from heaven. She rarely found any one 
who gratified her chronic yearning for “ something 
doing,” and the double twins’ liveliness and splendor 
struck straight to Cord’s innermost heart. 

Rick’s music inspired Daisy Coggs to start her sis- 
ters to dance a wild Hungarian folk dance which they 
had learned from children who danced it madly, to 
the strains of hurdy-gurdies, in the New York streets. 

The double twins danced their dance with entire 
unrestraint, swinging, bending, whirling ever faster 
and faster. They danced it well, but it was such a 
wild dance, so utterly outside anything Chagford had 
ever seen, that the girls did not know whether to con- 
demn it or not, though they could not help admiring 


124 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


it and Cordie was nearly crazy over it. Amabel 
shrugged her shoulders and made no comment at the 
end of this dance, but she allowed her face to com- 
ment severely upon it. 

Grandma Emerson and Louise Willis praised the 
Coggs girls’ grace and skill. Louise proposed a 
dancing-class for that summer, saying that the double 
twins would make the best dancers of them all. But 
the Coggs girls felt that Grandma Emerson and 
Louise, in Mrs. Porter’s absence, were smoothing 
something away which they themselves could not see. 

Nancy’s cheeks were flaming; she looked dis- 
tressed. The double twins knew that there was some- 
thing about their dance that was not quite acceptable ; 
they were annoyed, as any one is who is puzzled by 
disapproval not understood, and they were bitterly 
sorry that Nancy did not quite enjoy their contribu- 
tion to her entertainment. With this they felt a per- 
fectly human and justifiable desire to “ shake the 
poppycock nonsense ” out of Amabel. 

Mimi Hunt sprained her ankle slightly, just after 
the delicious refreshments which Letty Hetty, the 
Porters’ treasure of a general houseworker, had made 
were served. It was not a bad sprain, but it put an 
end to the dancing which Doctor Porter had come to 
join. Mimi could not dance, and so no one else cared 
to. 

“ Us girls is going home, right straight,” announced 


THE HONK OF THE HORN 125 


Taizie Coggs. “ We’ll take Mimi home; she can’t 
walk, and we’ll give Cord a ride some further; it’s 
easy to see she wants it! And we’ll take the whole 
bunch of you home, if you’ll go; we can hold a girl, 
each of us Coggses, and that’ll leave a whole seat alone 
for Amy Bell Willis and Miss Willis. Mrs. Emerson 
won’t mind being held like the other girls; she’s just 
the girliest girl of the lot.” 

“ No, I thank you,” said Amabel turning away. 

“ Oh, come on!” cried Daisy, with an angry little 
laugh. “ Turn the auty — automobile into a re frig — 
cold storage car.” 

Mimi hid her face to laugh into the couch pillow 
on which she lay; Mimi was a great giggler, and 
there was no one there who did not inwardly applaud 
Daisy’s hit. 

“ I’ve got to stop at the library, but you are just as 
kind as you can be to be willing to crowd us all into 
your car,” said Louise Willis hastily. There was a 
look in her gentle blue eyes that prophesied an elder- 
sisterly lecture for Amabel when they were at 
home. 

“ We’re going to give everybody part of our fun 
all the time,” announced Taizie. “ We’re coming to 
take out Letty Hetty; we’ll take you, if you’ll go,” 
she looked at the Willis girls uncertainly. 

“ Indeed I’ll go, gladly ! ” cried Louise, who was, 
as Nancy often said, “ the most perfect dear.” “ It is 


126 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


beautiful to love to share your happiness! I want to 
go to see you ; may I ? ” 

“ Surest thing there is! ” “ Well, I should say! ” 
cried two twins together, proving they were just 
enough not to hold Louise responsible for Amabel. 

It was a packed automobile that Elijah drove away 
from the party. All the guests were in it, except the 
Willis girls; Mimi had to be disposed comfortably 
and Hazie insisted on holding her foot, to keep the 
sprained muscles level. 

The twins thanked and kissed Mrs. Porter and 
Nancy and kept out of sight the hurt pride, the sore 
annoyance Amabel Willis had caused them. They 
had been blissful in their new car and new raiment 
and flashing gems ; since their change of fortune they 
had basked with entire single-mindedness in the sunny 
kindness they had been shown. Now they had been 
made to feel that they were not fit to associate with 
a girl properly taught and trained. The first instinct 
was indignant rebellion. But it hurt. They all four 
wondered to discover how it did hurt and they gener- 
ously hoped that Nancy had not seen how much they 
minded this new experience. 


CHAPTER VII 


A CUP AND SAUCER FIT 

FTER the double twins had stopped 
at Mimi Hunt’s home and Elijah had 
carried her into the house, Doris had 
been taken home, Grandma Emerson 
and Cord had been given a short 
drive and taken to their respective homes, the Coggs 
girls drove back to the big house by the lake, silently, 
now that there was no one to entertain, and unusually 
thoughtful. 

They walked up the steps in single file; ordinarily 
they ran into the house, pushing past one another in 
a frolic that was part of their arrival. 

They went solemnly into the drawing-room, moved 
by a common impulse to seek their most dignified 
apartment. 

Daisy unwound her veil; luckily she could not see 
its effect on a large hat jolted completely awry. 

“ She’s no better’n Nancy Porter,” she said gloom- 
ily. 

“ She’s not a patch on Nancy; what’s good enough 
for Nancy’s good enough for any girl in this town,” 
declared Taizie. 



127 



128 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ She’s not such a much ! ” said Hazie. “ I’d as lief 
talk queer and not know things as be so nasty to folks 
who hadn’t done a thing to me. But she’s awful 
pretty 1 ” 

Maizie pulled off her gauntleted gloves, thought- 
fully straightening each finger. Then she pulled out 
a hat pin and, using it to punctuate her words, said : 

“ I wonder what we’re going to do about it! ” 

“ I wouldn’t let on I noticed her,” advised Daisy. 

“ I don’t mean that,” said Maizie. “ ’Course we 
don’t notice her! But I guess it’s up to us to notice 
it” 

“ Now, what on earth — ” began Taizie, puzzled by 
this mysterious sentence. 

“ I mean we’ve got to cut it out,” said Maizie, so 
much in earnest that she did not notice the contradic- 
tion between her practice and her precept. “We may 
just as well own up. It doesn’t excuse Amy Bell 
- Willis for being snubby — at Nancy’s party where she 
didn’t have to come, too ! — but we twins have got to 
take lessons right straight.” 

“What kind?” cried Taizie alarmed. 

“ Manners, ways, talk, all the school things we 
didn’t learn, besides reading, writing — specially let- 
ters — gogoraphy, the whole shooting match ! ” cried 
this reformer. 

“ H’m ! ‘ Shooting match ’ don’t go, either ! ” com- 
mented Hazie. 


“A CUP AND SAUCER FIT ” 


129 


“ Sure it don’t ! ” agreed Maizie, quite honestly 
willing to own up. “ I’m just as bad as any of us, 
only I kinder see. We’ve got to learn what to say 
and what to stop saying. I hear how smooth Mrs. 
Porter and Miss Allaire talk, and how there ain’t any 
of these snappy things like 4 shooting match,’ and all 
the stuff that kinder makes talk sound lively, like a 
bunch of newsies selling papers, in anything Nancy 
Porter says, nor any of her friends. I’m wise to it 
now; we’re ’way off and we’ve got to get on 
board.” 

Taizie threw the other two a comical glance, and 
all three burst out laughing. 

“ You got in quite a lot that trip, Maize,” said 
Daisy. “ What’s the use ? If ever we get real warmed 
up to anything we’re saying, like you did then, we’d 
forget and just load it up with slang. How’d you 
think we’d get at it, anyway? Not go to school!” 
she added, seeing that Maizie had a plan. 

“ When we’re just rid of working and being poor! ” 
cried Hazie in terror. 

“ School, nothing ! I mean, of course we won’t go 
back to school, my dear sisters,” said Maizie in such 
a ladylike way that the other three were convulsed. 
“ We’ll get a lady to live with us and teach us all the 
time, call a halt — tell us when we make mistakes at 
the table, straighten out what we say, give us lessons 
every day so long, read books to us — all that, you 


130 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


know! What do you call ’em, something like the 
fellow that’s running the state? Governor? Govern- 
ess ! That’s what I mean ; a governess to turn us into 
perfect ladies, so many inches each day, till it’s gone 
the whole length.” 

“ Oh, gee ! ” sighed Hazie, her voice and her body 
both drooping. “ It’d be just like being a canned 
tomato, all shut up in a tin can, red head and all.” 

This melancholy speech sent Maizie, Daisy and 
Taizie off in peals of laughter, but Maizie persisted 
in her reform measures. 

“ We’re going down to see Mrs. Porter and tell her 
what we’ve got to have. She’ll most likely know just 
the girl to send us. I’d like to have a sort of youngish 
lady. It’d be fierce to have her grumpy and always 
taking cold, if she lived right with us here,” she said, 
perceiving the difficulties in getting the kind of com- 
panion they would be able to endure. 

“ Well, sir,” said Taizie rising, “ if it don’t beat the 
Dutch then I’ll sell out cheap! You no sooner get out 
of a tenement and squirming around to find out 
whether you’ll have enough left of your money to go 
to a movie that week, and get rich, and think you’ll 
be free to do ’most anything decent ’n’ you turn round 
and tie yourself up in a cage, taking lessons in being 
a lady! What’s the dif ? Why not have fun and give 
other folks fun and not care? ’Tisn’t a sin to make 
breaks in talk and not know fine ways! Why can’t 


“A CUP AND SAUCER FIT ” 


131 


we go as we please for once? It makes me ache! 
Might’s well be a pressed flower in a whopping big 
heavy dictionary ! ” 

Maizie joined in the laugh that greeted Taizie’s 
words and disgusted expression, but she stuck to her 
position; she made a wise answer, as well. 

“ I don’t know why we can’t, but we can’t, Taize, 
and you know it just as well as I do. We’ve got to 
match up with our house and our car and our new 
chance. I guess you can’t be free in this world to do 
what you please, so you’ve got to please to do what 
you’ve got to. It’s a funny thing, but it shoves you 
right along; you’ve got to keep on going up. It’s 
like that eskater thing, that moving staircase they 
have in New York in places; keeps you going up 
right along. We’re going to hate like ginger getting 
nicer, but we’d know it wasn’t nice not to get nicer! 
No good buying stuff to hang outside with nothing 
inside. It’s Mrs. Porter to-morrow for ours to ask 
her if she can’t get us the lady. Pdon’t envy her the 
job, poor soul, whoever she is!” 

“ Flapjacks! ” cried Taizie. “ I’d heaps rather live 
with the Coggs girls ’n I would almost anywheres 
else, so there! I don’t care if we ain’t regular col- 
leges, we don’t lie and we don’t scrap — often or bad 
— and we like to have a good time all round, and 
we ain’t mean, not a bit, and — ” 

“ And we’re little tin angels, all painted gay, let you 


132 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


tell it ! ” interrupted Daisy. “ When it comes to 
throwing bouquets at yourself, you’re it, Taize! ” 

“ No harm throwing bouquets at yourself when 
there’s three more of you, you can’t tell apart,” main- 
tained Taizie. 

“ Never are apart to tell,” said Daisy, scoring the 
last word as she ran off up-stairs. 

The next afternoon Maizie and Taizie broke 
through the double twin custom of going about in an 
unbroken square of four corners, and had Elijah take 
them down to see Mrs. Porter while Daisy and Hazie 
went to pay a visit to Grandma Emerson and, later, 
to meet Lora as she came from work and bring her 
home with them for the night. 

“ We’ll come down and pick you up,” Maizie called 
back as they drove away. 

Daisy grinned back at her cheerfully, not being 
able to reply. Maizie had caught the expression 
“ pick you up,” and used it with “ the five o’clock tea 
voice,” as Taizie called it, which she was fond of em- 
ploying for her ridicule of herself as a fine lady. 

Mrs. Porter was alone, humming softly over her 
sewing, when the big car stopped at the gate. She 
came out to meet the girls and brought them back to 
the living-room with her, holding a hand of each in 
one of hers. 

“ Let me pull your chairs into the line of breeze,” 
said Mrs. Porter, carrying out her own suggestion. 


“A CUP AND SAUCER FIT” 


133 


“ Now, hats off ! And where are the other two quar- 
ters?” 

“ Gone to see Mrs. Emerson, first, and then to meet 
Lora Bruce when the mill shuts down; they’re going 
to bring her up to stay all night,” said Maizie, putting 
her automobile bonnet on her knee and rumpling up 
her hair in a way she had that was not necessary, for 
her hair was quite equal to rumpling itself. 

“ Say, Mrs. Porter, dear, we came down to ask you 
where’d we get a lady to live with us and sandpaper 
us down and polish us up?” 

“ Do you mean — ” Mrs. Porter hesitated. 

“ I guess we do,” said Maizie laughing. 

“ A teacher ? A companion ? ” Mrs. Porter still 
sought for Maizie’s exact meaning. 

“ All two and then some,” nodded Maizie. “ We 
want some one to keep at us most all the time, but not 
to make it so tough we can’t stand it. I guess that’s 
a big order, but somebody’s got to fill it. You see, 
we sat up and took notice at Nancy’s party, only we 
tried to make her think we was laying down all the 
time, not smelling a mice ! Amy Bell Willis was pretty 
nifty, but she gave us a eye-opener. It’s so that we 
ain’t like any one else and it’s got to be changed ! We 
want a lady to make the change for us. We’ll give 
her plenty of change to pay for it. It’s a big job; 
it’s got to be done right. She’s got to live right there 
and keep kinder dropping hints, but there’s no getting 


134 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

out of it: we’ve got to get her! Who’ll it 
be?” 

“ My dear Maizie, I’m sure I have no idea ! ” cried 
Mrs. Porter. “ But I approve of the plan with all my 
heart. What sensible children you are! What dear 
ones too, to take Amabel’s foolish airs in this spirit, 
letting them waken in you a desire to remove her 
excuse for them, and not feeling angry with her ! Not 
that we admit that she has an excuse for being snob- 
bish, especially to such kind, honest girls as the doub- 
lets!” 

“ Ain’t you the dear thing! ” cried Taizie adoringly. 
“ But we was angry; we’re pretty mad yet. We was 
madder’n hornets when we got home and talked it 
over. As though if you ’n’ the doctor didn’t mind us 
for Nancy — nor Nancy mind us either ! — we wasn’t 
good enough for any girl in Chagford, Amy Bell 
Willis, or any one else! Pretty she is, though! But 
Maizie, she’s the long-headed one! She figured out 
that it was up to us to get a shine, so we come down 
to see who’s the lady you know that’s got the best 
brushes and outfit. We’re getting a fearful lot of 
folks up to the palace to work, one way and another. 
We’ve got another woman, of another color, besides 
Cleopatra Samaria Cantata. And Mr. Riggs — Eli- 
jah, then! — has moved in with his wife and she’s 
going to keep house. Now if we get a lady polisher 
to rub up the four twins — phew ! Where’ll it stop? ” 


“A CUP AND SAUCER FIT M 


135 


Mrs. Porter had one of the refreshing laughs which 
the twins always gave her, then she said : “ The worst 
of it is that I don’t, at this moment, know of any one 
to recommend to you. But I’ll try to think of some 
one and I’ll ask the doctor. If we both fail, and 
there’s no one in Chagford, I’ll ask my dear old friend, 
Mrs. Lawrence, in Boston, to find some one for us. 
She is sure to have just the person ready to send us, 
because she is always helping people.” 

“ Do you think the lady has to be even kinder old, 
Mrs. Porter ? ” asked Maizie meekly. 

“ We’d like it so much if she wasn’t real old, didn’t 
have to wear great thick round glasses and be stiff 
in the joints, so she couldn’t stand it to let us be silly 
and noisy. Honest to goodness, I believe we’d die if 
we got all tied up like that ! If she couldn’t see a joke, 
or let us yell around some, well, there wouldn’t more’n 
one twin live through it, and I guess it would be four 
funerals while we was at it ! ” 

“ Oh, Maizie ! ” sighed Mrs. Porter. “ I don’t be- 
lieve there is any one on earth can tone down your 
irrepressible Coggsiness! I think I hope there isn’t! 
Though I do want you to carry out your plan and 
learn all that you ought to know, because one day, 
when you are no longer twin youngsters, but getting 
old yourselves, you will suffer from the lack. I think 
your companion need not be in the least old; I think 
it is necessary that she should be decidedly young and 


136 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


sympathetic. And I shall insist on her being able to 
enjoy frolicking and not tie you up in the least.” 

“Never do you go back on us one mite!” cried 
Maizie in relief and admiration. “ ’Twould be pretty 
hard luck to muffle us, after we’d only just got enough 
money to buy tin horns all ’round! I hear Nancy 
coming; she’s talking to the dog and the cat.” 

Nancy came in, cool and fresh looking in her fine 
blue gingham, her hat shading her wide, candid brow. 

“ Hullo, girls ! ” she called as she came. “ Which 
two is it? Letty Hetty said two Coggs twins were 
here.” 

“ It’s us, Maizie and Taizie. Hullo, Nancy! We’re 
just going, been here a long time,” said the Coggs 
girls. 

“ You can’t go yet; I’ve something to tell you that 
can’t wait. I was going to go to see you after tea, if 
mamma would go with me. How would you like a 
companion?” asked Nancy, speaking fast. 

Mrs. Porter looked up quickly. “ How extraordi- 
nary! Why do you ask that now, Nancy? ” 

“ Because I’ve just found one for them where I’ve 
been with father,” Nancy answered her mother. “ It 
is where father was called, over at North Chagford — • 
I mean there is where she is. She is a young lady, 
somewhere in the twenties, I think, but you can’t tell 
when a person is ill. She is as weak as she can be, 
but Doctor Porter and his assistant decided that the 


“A CUP AND SAUCER FIT” 


137 


most that ails her is anxiety and loneliness. She is 
a lady, speaks very prettily, has a nice voice, a sweet, 
gentle manner. She says her father had a great deal 
of money, but when he died it proved to be all gone, 
so she has had to earn her living. She has had a fine 
education, she says, and it shows. She expected to 
get a position in Chagford, but was disappointed, and 
now she is here, ill, without any money. I told her 
all about the twins and asked her if she would like 
to be their companion, if they would have one, and 
she was so glad, and so much too weak to feel glad, 
that she cried as hard as she could cry for a few 
minutes.” 

“Will we have a companion!” cried Taizie. 
“ Isn’t that a cup-and-saucer fit! Why, Nancy Porter, 
we came down to ask your mother to get us a com- 
panion — if that’s what she’d be. Maizie said gov- 
ernor, no, governess.” 

“ Yes,” Maizie echoed her. “ We got a pointer or 
so at your party. Little Cord thinks we’re about it, 
but she’s only a kid and a poor child, like we was. 
But Amy Bell — ” 

Maizie stopped, for Nancy flushed furiously. 

“ Don’t you care, Nancy,” Taizie said hastily. 
“ She’s afraid we’ve got what-do-you-call ’ems ? 
Germs; something ketching in bad manners. She 
was a frost, but she’s done us good. We’re going to 
get a polish on.” 


138 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“What’s this lady’s name?” asked Maizie; both 
girls were wildly excited. 

“ Didn’t I say ? She is Miss Rhoda Drummond, the 
patient father went to see at North Chagford this 
morning. And, mamma dear, Miss Drummond is all 
worn out; she’s dreadfully weak,” said Nancy per- 
suasively. “ She’s not well enough to do anything 
now. Mightn’t she come here for a little visit, 
to rest and get well before she began with the 
girls ? ” 

“Can’t we rest her?” cried Taizie, before Mrs. 
Porter could reply. “ Goodness knows, we’ve got 
room enough! We’re just rattling around in that pal- 
ace. We won’t bother her to tell us anything till she’s 
able. I guess we’ll be glad to be let off learning’s 
long’s we’ve got a good excuse! Let her come right 
up to us, Mrs. Porter; it’ll be such fun fussing, get- 
ting her rested and strong ! ” 

“ You shall have all the fun being kind that we can 
give you,” said Mrs. Porter, with the approving smile 
which the Coggs girls were beginning to feel was a 
reward worth struggling to win. “ But isn’t it better 
to see Miss Drummond before we settle everything? 
If you will take me, I will go with you to-night in 
your car to see the 4 cup ’ which has dropped down 
among us, ready to set in your 4 saucer.’ You called 
the discovery of Miss Drummond 4 a cup and saucer 
fit.’ ” 


“ A CUP AND SAUCER FIT” 


139 


“ All right ; that’s more sensible ! ” said Maizie 
Coggs. “ What luck! Things just roll our way! 
We’ll get fixed up inside to match our fine clothes and 
we’ll get tips on manners ! And we need ’em ! ” 

“ I am going to take two of the twins, the two they 
decide upon, to Boston for a day or so at Aunt Mary 
Lawrence’s, Nancy,” said Mrs. Porter. “ My friend, 
Mrs. Lawrence, Maizie and Taizie, lives suitably to 
her great wealth, and with such beautiful standards 
of taste that you will enjoy seeing her house and — 
who knows ? — • perhaps get valuable suggestions for 
certain funny young heiresses in Chagford to follow. 
Will you go? ” 

Maizie bounced up and flew over to kiss Mrs. Porter 
violently. 

“ What a peach you are ! ” she said. Then she 
looked thoughtful, a little sober. 

“ It’s taking the snap out of us, Grandfather Peter 
Debbs’ setting us up is,” she said. “ First off we were 
out for nothing but fun, and now we’re hunting ropes 
to tie us up! I do believe, honest to goodness I do, 
if we don’t look out we won’t be so independent as we 
was when we was poor! I’m getting all dampened 
down myself ! ” 

Mrs. Porter and Nancy laughed. “ Don’t worry 
about your meekness, Maizie,” Mrs. Porter said. 
“ I’m quite sure you have plenty of spirit left.” 

“ We won’t like the same things, but maybe we’ll 


140 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


like new things just as well/' said Taizie. “ I guess, 
maybe, we won’t get to be so awful nice that we get 
stiff. It’s the funniest thing, but you can’t have a 
good time in a grand house and automobile if you 
ain’t sure you’re cut off the same piece. I can’t say 
it right, but I know what I mean.” 

“ So do I,” said Nancy. “ Your fairy godmother 
has put a crown on your head, and dressed you in 
golden garments and you want to learn to rule over 
your kingdom.” 

“H’m?” Maizie scowled over this poetical expla- 
nation. “ All right; I kinder get that. We don’t 
want Peter Debbs’ money to be all there is to us. 
Come home, Taizie. We’ll be down after supper, Mrs. 
Porter, if you’ll go see Miss Drumming — Drum- 
mond? — with us, and we’re just as thankful as we 
can be to you and Nancy. What a duck you are, little 
Nancy, to think us and Miss Drummond together, 
before you knew we was going to hunt a polishing 
lady!” 

Early in the warm June dusk the lights of the big 
grey car whitened the road to the doctor’s house 
and threw the arching trees beside it into black 
shadow. 

Mrs. Porter, sitting on the piazza waiting for them, 
went down the walk without letting the Coggs girls 
get out to call her. 

“ I haven’t let Nancy go because, if you should take 


“A CUP AND SAUCER FIT ” 


141 


Miss Drummond home with you to-night, it is better 
not to crowd the car,” she said as Maizie jumped out 
to help her into the rear seat. 

It was seven miles from Doctor Porter’s to the 
small farm where Miss Drummond was boarding, and 
where she had been overtaken with the serious break- 
down which had brought her to the end of her re- 
sources and prevented her from renewing them. 
North Chagford was the most out-lying of the Chag- 
ford townships; it was the farming section. Nancy 
dearly liked to drive there with hef father. It took 
Tonic, who was growing old, a long time to cover the 
trip, but the slender car sped Maizie, Taizie and Mrs. 
Porter to the white farmhouse in twenty minutes. 
Mrs. Pailey, the farmer’s wife, took the guests at 
once to Miss Drummond; she could hardly walk for 
turning to look at the Coggs twins, whose wonderful 
story and unexpected speeches were in every one’s 
mouth. 

They found Miss Drummond as Nancy had de- 
scribed her, lying inert in a big chair, her hands flut- 
tering nervously in her lap, great dark hollows under 
her brown eyes, her face thin and white, with a look 
of strained patience on it. 

“ My dear, I’m your doctor’s wife, Nancy’s 
mother,” said Mrs. Porter going up to her with such 
a warm look of pity and understanding on her lovely 
face that Rhoda Drummond’s eyes filled with the 


142 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


quick tears of weakness while she smiled back at her, 
as no one could help doing. 

“ And these are two of the Coggs girls of whom 
Nancy says she told you,” Mrs. Porter went on. 
“ They are twins, but not twins to each other ; the 
other two, a mate to each of these, are at home. 
These are Maizie and Taizie, Mary and Teresa, and 
the ones you do not see are precisely like those you 
see.” 

“ We’re screams,” said Taizie. “ You can sort us 
out, though, when you buckle down to it. Awful 
sorry you don’t feel good.” 

“ Yes, we are,” Maizie confirmed her. “ We 
wanted, we wondered if — ain’t you better?” 

Maizie cast an imploring glance at Mrs. Porter, 
abandoning her attempt at setting forth their errand 
and mutely begging Mrs. Porter to do this for her. 

“ You know already what we came to suggest,” 
Mrs. Porter came to Maizie’s rescue. “ It was 
Nancy’s idea, and she says she broached it to you. 
These four lovable, good twin girls need what you 
can give them, teaching from books, teaching by con- 
tact and daily hints and example. They have come 
into wealth, but only lately, so they have missed a 
great deal that we all take for granted. They were 
motherless, fatherless, homeless, they could not go to 
school much, they need what you have had and can 
give them. On the other hand, you want what they 


“A CUP AND SAUCER FIT” 


143 


can give you. Do you suppose you can mutually help 
one another? I must tell you, Miss Drummond, that 
after Nancy made her suggestion the doctor looked 
up the references you gave him and satisfied himself 
that you are precisely the one for these children’s 
guide. We feel responsible for them, and my hus- 
band would not hand them over to a stranger without 
satisfying himself that he had done his best for them. 
I thought you would like to know that you are not a 
stranger to us, after what Doctor Porter learned about 
you.” 

“ I have lost everything I had in the world,” Miss 
Drummond said ; her voice was soft and sweet. “ I 
must earn my living now. If I can teach the Misses 
Coggs — I think I can — I shall be endlessly grateful 
to you and your Nancy, for putting me in touch with 
them when I so desperately needed to be shown a 
path.” 

“ Do you think you can stand it to live with us ? ” 
Maizie asked anxiously. “ We don’t think we’re so 
bad, but I guess we’re pretty far off the trolley nice 
folks run on. Of course, though, if we had manners 
and education we wouldn’t of needed you, so maybe 
you’ll not mind us too much. We’ll try awful hard 
to make you see a good time ; we won’t loaf when we 
study, and we’ll do our best to tag on behind when 
you whistle. We’re good natured, and that’s honest, 
and we never did seem to take to meanness and lying 


144 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


— that’s the meanest of all, we say ! So you can bank 
on us for what we are. Do you say you’re in for try- 
ing it?” 

Maizie paused for an answer; the anxious line 
which was beginning to come often between her eyes 
making its appearance. 

Rhoda Drummond laughed, not a hearty laugh, but 
an amused little ripple. 

“ Beggars can’t be choosers, my dear girl,” she said. 
“ I must accept any chance offered me now. But 
please let me tell you that you are the heart-warming 
sort of girls, and I’m not one bit afraid to go to you, 
I’ll like you fast enough, if you’ll like me. Thank you 
ever so much for taking me.” 

“Oh, gee!” exclaimed Taizie, embarrassed and 
pleased. “ You look awful sweet, only you’re too thin 
and pale to be as pretty as you are; Nancy said you 
must be pretty when you was well. We’ll be tickled 
pink to get you. You see; that’s what we want! 
You to tell us not to say ‘ Oh, gee,’ and ‘ tickled pink,’ 
like that.” 

This time Rhoda Drummond’s laugh was nearer the 
sound of health. “ No, you don’t! ” she cried. “ If 
you already know that’s slang and bad form, you don’t 
need me to tell you ! ” 

“To keep us at it — I mean keep us off such say- 
ings,” Maizie explained. “ Well, say! If you’re com- 
ing to polish us, you’re coming this minute. We’re 


“A CUP AND SAUCER FIT” 


145 


going to rest you up and have some fun calling you 
comp’ny and getting Cleopatra Samaria Cantata to 
fuss up sick folks’ stuff for you, till you’re stronger’n 
Sam’s son, though who Sam was who had that strong 
son they tell about, search me! There I go again! 
You see you’d better hurry and come! Even while 
you’re sick, and we’re resting you up, you can switch 
us off and give us some tips.” 

This time Miss Drummond’s tears not only gath- 
ered, but dropped on her pale cheeks. 

“ You dear, dear girl ! ” she said. “ How can I go 
while I am so weak, to be a bother to you? Yet how 
can I not go ? ” 

“ It will be quite right to go,” Mrs. Porter assured 
her. “ The double twins are longing to taste the joys 
of ministering to you. They will be the happiest 
quartette in the world while you need it. Perhaps 
they will plot to keep you ill; I know what kind of 
honey bees in clover they will be with some one to 
serve. But you won’t be able to make them happy in 
that way long! They will keep you laughing till 
broken nerves mend themselves at once and health 
will fly back, for it always considers itself summoned 
by a laugh, you know.” 

Miss Drummond looked at her with a tremulous 
smile. “ I wonder how it has all happened, just when 
I was despairing?” she said. “ Your dear little 
daughter is responsible.” 


146 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ Don’t love Nancy Porter better’n us ! ” Taizie 
appealed to Miss Drummond, with pretended fear. 
“ Everybody adores her ; us, too — adore her, I 
mean.” 

“ We’ve got our car and Mr. Riggs, our chauffeur, 
at the door. Tell us where your things are and we’ll 
bundle ’em up and swipe you ! ” cried Maizie. 

“ Leave everything for another time and daylight,” 
advised Mrs. Porter. “ We’ll gather up Miss Drum- 
mond and the little that she absolutely needs at first 
and get the rest later.” 

“ That’s right ! ” Maizie cried. “ She don’t need 
a thing, ’s far’s that goes; we’ve got lendings 
enough.” 

“ Sure ! There’s that lace-trimmed nightgown I got, 
Maize ! I’ve been wondering when I’d ever dare wear 
it! Miss Drummond can wear it first; kinder tame 
it for me, and maybe I’ll get so I’ll dare use it,” said 
Taizie, with something like a wink at Rhoda Drum- 
mond. 

Miss Drummond’s feeble protests were swept away. 
Mrs. Porter supported the girls’ claim to take Miss 
Drummond on the instant, and at last she yielded to 
the inevitable, and suggested what might be left and 
what taken with them of her personal belongings. 
She left her chair and helped them get together what 
must go, called Mrs. Pailey, who responded so 
promptly that it suggested her having been exceedingly 


“A CUP AND SAUCER FIT ” 


147 


near during the visit, bade her landlady good-by and 
put on her hat and coat surprisingly fast. The ex- 
citement of going had called a flush into her white 
face; already Rhoda Drummond . looked as though 
the first step had been taken toward recovery. 

The Coggs girls helped Miss Drummond into the 
car and disposed her in the rear beside Mrs. Porter. 
They had brought a great quantity of pillows, which 
they arranged with surprising carefulness, so that 
they absolutely forbade the least chance of her being 
jolted. 

Then they got in themselves, Taizie with Elijah, as 
usual, for in the secret depths of her being Taizie 
hoped to acquire the knowledge to run the car herself, 
some day. Maizie sat in a middle seat and leaned over 
its back with her arms folded, the better to watch the 
effect of the drive upon the invalid whom they had 
captured. 

They left Mrs. Porter at her own gate, upon which 
Nancy was swinging, eagerly watching for them, with 
Rick seated beside her on the post, Bumblebee, her 
tortoise-shell cat, on the other post and the little dog 
Fred, at her feet. 

Nancy waved her hand, hanging over the gate, when 
she saw that Miss Drummond was in the car, calling 
something no one could hear while the engine 
chugged-chugged . 

The twins then saw Nancy skipping beside her 


148 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


mother up the walk, her arm around her waist and 
knew that the dear little maid was rejoicing in the 
success of her plot, while she asked questions about 
the visit. 

“ Here's where we get you to ourselves, Miss 
Drummond," cried Maizie, leaning still farther toward 
her future companion and friend. “ This is a movie : 
‘ The Coggs Twins Swiping a Polisher! ' ” 

And once more Rhoda Drummond surprised her- 
self by laughing, and this time the laugh rang out in 
the warm June air quite clear and girlishly. 


CHAPTER VIII 


STUDYING THE CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY 



HE double twins discovered that their 
true vocation was nursing. 


ing,” Daisy said, developing a sense 
of accuracy in terms. 


“ Not so much nursing as fuss- 


Miss Drummond made the same discovery, so 
ceased to resist, even in thought, the care which the 
four girls lavished upon her. 

They came up in a procession with her meals, four 
twins, looking so exactly alike that at first Rhoda 
Drummond had to remind herself that she was not 
in the least delirious, seeing visions in her brain. The 
girls each carried a small tray, dividing up the pleas- 
ure of serving, each tray holding something for the 
meal, while Ceescy brought up the rear with the main 
tray, or sometimes Elijah Riggs* wife came; she was 
officially the housekeeper, but she enjoyed as much as 
the twins did trying to get Miss Drummond well. 

Between meals there did not a quarter of an hour 
pass without bringing to Miss Drummond’s room a 


149 


150 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


ruddy-cheeked, ruddy-haired, smiling girl, which one 
Miss Drummond was not yet sure, with a tid-bit to 
offer her to eat. 

“ You seem to think that there’s no truth in the 
stories one reads of slow starvation,” Rhoda Drum- 
mond laughed. “ I believe you think that it sets in 
five minutes after a meal and is fatal in ten! Or do 
you think I’m a nestling and you are robin redbreasts 
foraging for me ? ” 

“ Not red breasts ” said the twin who had just 
brought Miss Drummond calves’ foot jelly with a few 
wafers, and who happened to be Daisy. She empha- 
sized the word “ breasts ” and touched her glowing 
hair significantly. “ It won’t hurt you to eat often ; 
we do, and we are as strong as mule — as anything ! ” 
Daisy corrected herself. 

Already the twins had noticed that one of the 
points Miss Drummond wanted them to improve was 
the vigorous inelegance of their similes. 

“ I’m getting well, dear twin. Please tell me which 
one you are ! I’m so ashamed, but really I cannot dis- 
tinguish you unless you are all together — and then, 
often, I’m mistaken ! ” cried Miss Drummond. 

“ It’s a shame we came by the set, like buttons on 
a card,” said Daisy with earnest contrition. “ I’ll tell 
you : Maizie shall pin a blue ribbon on her shoulder ; 
I’ll have a lavender one, Taizie shall have a green one, 
Hazie’s must be brown or yellow. You couldn’t stand 


“ 1 i’m getting well, dear twin, please tell me which 

ONE YOU are! ’ ” 
































































































































































I 

. 

9 











































THE CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY 151 


looking at us if one of us had a pink or a red one; 
you’d have real — real apes.” 

“ Real — oh ! Relapse ! ” Miss Drummond strug- 
gled so hard not to laugh that she might as well 
have let herself enjoy Daisy’s funny guess at the 
word. 

“ We don’t mind if you laugh at us; funny things 
and folks are made to laugh at, ain’t — aren’t they? ” 
Daisy said, with Coggs good nature, and proving she 
had already profited by Miss Drummond’s corrections 
of tenses and words. “ Maizie and Taizie are going 
to Boston with Mrs. Porter and Nancy to-morrow. 
Maybe, while they’re gone, you’ll learn Hazie and I 
so you’ll know us two apart, anyway.” 

“ Hazie and me,” said Miss Drummond. 

“ Oh, land ! I thought ‘ her and me,’ saying me, 
was awful; that you had to say I, if you wanted to 
be elegant. How’ll a body ever know ? ” groaned 
Daisy. 

“ By practice, listening, not worrying; it’ll come 
right without your knowing how,” said Miss Drum- 
mond with sympathy. “ People who don’t know and 
don’t care use me wrong; people who don’t know 
and do care use I wrong ! The best rule for you is to 
try how it sounds without the other person in your 
sentence. You would not have said: Know I, so 
don’t say: Know Hazie and I; it’s not so hard if 
you keep that easy little rule in mind.” 


152 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Daisy looked downcast still. “ You’d never think, 
to hear people talk right along, easy and quick, how 
hard it was to get educated, would you?” she said. 

“ There are few who are not careless and make 
mistakes,” Miss Drummond laughed this time and 
touched Daisy’s arm with a caressing finger. “ Most 
of us have not been educated to speak correctly; it is 
caught by being with people who use good English. 
You, dear twin girls, have not been with people who 
thought about good English till now. You’ll be sur- 
prised to discover at the end of a year how you will 
notice your own mistakes and soon make few.” 

Taizie rushed into the room at that moment; she 
carried a plate in one hand and a steaming cup of 
beef tea in the other, having forgotten a tray. 

“ You here? ” she cried, seeing Daisy. “ I thought 
we’d forgotten to bring Miss Drummond a bite since 
breakfast and she’d be all weak and folded up ! Drink 
this beef tea. Miss Drummond, quick, while it’s hot, 
though goodness knows, it’s hot enough outside us to- 
day not to put hot things inside you, too ! ” 

“ Oh, my dear, my dear! ” cried Miss Drummond, 
“ Daisy has just made me eat jelly and wafers! ” 

“ Good for Daise ! But beef tea won’t count ; it’s 
thin ! Drink it, quick ! Maizie and — I ? — Thought 
that was right! Maizie and I are the ones that need 
beef tea; we’re weak and washed out when we think 
of visiting in that elegant house ! Ain’t it fierce, Miss 


THE CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY 153 


Drummond, we didn’t find you sooner?” Taizie 
poured out these words rapidly. 

“ Isn’t it a pity, do you mean?” Miss Drummond 
faithfully fulfilled her office, which Maizie now called 
that of Polisher and Hinter. “ This was a particu- 
larly good time for me to find you , and earlier would 
not have had great effect on this visit. Mrs. Lawrence 
will not misunderstand you; she is a close friend of 
Mrs. Porter’s and that tells us what she is like. Be- 
sides, really nice people are not apt to misunderstand.” 

“ Well, whatever we are it’s us — we — that’s go- 
ing. There’s no more use worrying over the ways 
we take along than about the red hair we’ve got to 
wear there! ” Taizie cheered herself with this reflec- 
tion and ended with a laugh, as usual. 

The next afternoon Maizie and Taizie departed to 
receive an object lesson in presiding over a large 
establishment. 

They were gone three days, days spent by Daisy 
and Hazie in wondering what they were doing and 
seeing in Boston and in taking care of Miss Drum- 
mond. 

On the third day they were to return. Daisy and 
Hazie made ready to go to the station in the car to 
meet them with as much excited joy as if the parting 
had been measured by weeks instead of hours. The 
affection between these double twins was a delightful 
thing to see; it never flagged. They were always at 


154 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


the top notch of mutual admiration and enjoyment, 
each one of the four as necessary as another to the 
other three. There never before had been a separation 
between them for as long as this one; its end called 
forth excited rapture in the prospect of meeting. 
Daisy and Hazie appeared in Miss Drummond’s room 
with an armful of magazines before going to the sta- 
tion. 

“ We don’t know whether these are any good,” said 
Daisy, “ but we went to the library and asked the lady 
there what was the best of ’em and she said these 
four on top were — was? — first-class and the rest 
was — were ? — good second-class, so we went on 
down to the store and bought all the classes. You 
read ’em while we’re gone.” 

“ Daisy ! ” cried Miss Drummond. “ All those 
magazines? Haven’t you the car still? Are you go- 
ing to the station in an oxen-drawn wagon? Even 
if you are, I couldn’t read all these before you came 
back! You dear girls! You are not satisfied till you 
have conferred favors wholesale, are you?” 

“We didn’t know how long you’d be reading ’em; 
we’ve noticed you read awful fast. Anyhow you may 
not like the whole bunch,” said Daisy, reddening with 
pleasure and embarrassment under this praise. 

“ I’ll keep the best of the stories to read aloud with 
you four doublets,” said Miss Drummond. “ Good 
stories are best shared.” 


THE CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY 155 


“ You think they’ll be good for us; we’re on to — 
we know you ! ” cried Hazie. 

“ Now, don’t look forward to reading as you would 
to medicine!” Miss Drummond protested. “ Stories 
are a magic that takes us outside our own lives into 
new worlds.” 

“ All right,” said Hazie. “ But we’ve got taken out 
a good deal and we don’t rightly know yet what world 
we’re in.” 

Daisy came, with her automobile cap on, bearing the 
customary tray; it held this time a glass of milk, a 
saucer of strawberries, thin rice cakes, a small bowl 
of sugar, a plump little jug of cream. 

“You might get hungry while we was — were 
gone,” she said. “ Anyhow these are the best berries 
yet! Miss Drummond, when we think how we used 
to walk by the grocers’ in New York just licking our 
lips at the strawberries in the windows and go with- 
out things so we could buy one box, and that was only 
last summer, and this summer we go to our telephone, 
up against the wall in our own palace, and call up the 
store and tell ’em to send up half a dozen boxes, so 
Ceescy can make shortcake, and we have all we can 
eat raw, why it — it makes you feel queer! I’ll be 
blest if it don’t make me want to get right down on 
my knees ’phoning ! ” Daisy spoke with a quaver in 
her voice; occasionally these twin girls lost the sense 
of a perpetual revel that they were enjoying and 


156 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

were overwhelmed with awe and gratitude at their 
fate. 

Rhoda Drummond arose and put her arm gently 
over Daisy’s shoulder. 

“ It is wonderful, dear,” she said. “ I feel quite 
awed myself to know that I am the one you are going 
to trust to help fit you to fill the role you must play 
and to prove your gratitude.” 

Daisy gave her a little squeeze without answering 
further. “ Couldn’t you come out on the piazza and 
be sitting there when Maizie and Taizie drive in?” 
she asked. “ They’d be so glad to see you up and 
around the house! You feel pretty fine now, don’t 
you?” 

“ I feel almost as well as ever. Of course I can sit 
on the piazza; I’d rather. How could one help get- 
ting well who had been fed as you’ve fed me — if it 
didn’t kill her ? ” Miss Drummond said. “ I’ll eat 
those strawberries; they’re so enticing they need no 
appetite. Then I’ll get dressed and be on the piazza 
to welcome Maizie and Taizie. After to-day I’m go- 
ing to take my place in the household and not be 
waited on.” 

“ You won’t do a thing you don’t feel like doing ; 
waiting’s the biggest fun yet. So long — T mean 
good-by. We’ll be back, right straight; don’t get 
lonely.” Daisy hurried off. Hazie was calling her 
from the foot of the stairs. 


THE CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY 157 


Elijah shared the impatience of these two of the 
four twins to welcome the travellers. He ran the car 
down to the station at an unusual speed for cautious 
Elijah, and had it waiting in front of the station some 
minutes before the train was due. 

Maizie and Taizie came off the train at a point 
hidden from their twins’ view, but when they ap- 
peared around the corner Daisy and Hazie fell out of 
the tonneau and then fell on their twins’ necks with 
entire disregard of the intense enjoyment this greeting 
gave the newsboys in the square, and the amusement 
of the girls’ fellow passengers. 

“Oh, you old Hottentot!” cried Daisy, shaking 
and hugging Maizie. “ You don’t get away so easy 
again ! ” 

“ Taize, you — you twin you! It’s like a hole full 
of nothing up at the palace with you out,” Hazie was 
saying, treating her twin to a violent beating with her 
left fist while she choked her with her right arm. 

Then the twins recovered enough to greet Mrs. 
Porter and Nancy. 

“How was it? Did Mrs. Lawrence put you out? 
Did you learn a lot? Mrs. Porter, we’re crazy, but 
we’re not so crazy that we don’t know it was awful 
good of you to take Maize and Taizie down there. 
We’re going to show what we think about it, give us 
a chance,” cried Daisy. 

“ Come, come ! ” Doctor Porter protested, holding 


158 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Nancy’s hand as he waited to get his family under 
way. “ You mad Coggs girls, come down to my 
house and have it out, but let me take my wife and 
child to safety now! Get into your triumphal car 
and be off ! ” 

The twins laughed and obeyed. 

“ Tell us,” ordered Hazie laconically as they started. 

“ Biggest ever!” returned Taizie with equal brev- 
ity. “ Perfectly magnificent house, but no brass band 
to it, you know. Just is elegant and saying nothing. 
Things sort of match, everything looks as if it had 
to be just where it was. Say, girls, our house is 
funny ; it’s so that it ain’t — isn’t — the right thing. 
Too flapdoodle! Mrs. Porter got in what she meant 
to; we saw what it was! And the servants! Well, 
say! Seem to like to do things for you, but the way 
they do ’em! Just as soft-footed as cats, and soft 
voices.” 

“ City cats haven’t soft voices at night,” observed 
Hazie. “ What else? What about Mrs. Lawrence? ” 

“ Grand ! ” Maizie took up the theme. “ Dresses so 
quiet, but fine! No fandangles, just a big diamond 
and her wedding ring. We took off our rings and 
went like Nancy, plain. Mrs. Lawrence wears lovely 
clothes, but all still, like. Looks ’s if she wore ’em 
because they belonged to her, but they didn’t count; 
soft silk, no rustle, dandy lace, but nothing screaming 
at you to look at it. She’s the real thing! She was 


THE CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY 159 

awful nice to us, talked to us so nice we got over being 
scared.” 

“ Scared! You! I guess so! ” scoffed Daisy. 

“ Well, I tell you it took the bounce out of Taizie, 
let alone me,” said Maizie earnestly. “ Made us feel 
like a big boot in a box of lace! But we watched 
Nancy at the table, and she gave us the tip about all 
the tools to eat with, and Mrs. Lawrence was just as 
nice as she could be, so we had a fine time. And the 
things we know now we didn’t know before we 
couldn’t exactly tell you, but we know ’em just as 
much. Mrs. Lawrence loves Mrs. Porter and Nancy 
’most to death, you can see that. They were quiet 
about it, but they showed they couldn’t be glad enough 
they were together. It’s pretty nice to see people like 
that, when they knew each other as girls! That dear 
little Nancy; she’s too sweet. She just goes along 
her happy way, same down there in that lovely place 
as she is at home, or with us Bouncing Bets ! She’s all 
silk. We’ve learned heaps, we’ve had a great time. 
We’re on the right track. When you get rich you’ve 
got to amount to a lot more’n if you stayed poor, and 
it’s got to be a nice lot. We’ll fix our house over 
some day so it won’t yell at folks going by to see what 
it cost and we’ll learn! — How’s Miss Drummond?” 

“ Fine ! Heaps better. She shows us things all the 
time, pulls out mistakes so they don’t hurt coming,” 
said Daisy. “ Luck’s trotting right along with us ; 


160 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


we’ve caught a governess that’s the very one ! Awful 
easy to love her, too. She’s getting real pretty, now 
she’s rested. She’s only twenty-six; she told us so. 
Some day, don’t you think we might get nice enough 
to call her Rhoda without being fresh? It would be 
so cozy.” 

“ I guess it would be all right,” said Maizie. “ Mrs. 
Porter could tell us. I’m wild over Mrs. Porter and 
the doctor and Nancy. Honest to goodness, I don’t 
believe you could find another three like them, man, 
woman and child, anywhere from Dan to beer server.” 

“ That ain’t — isn’t the right way to say that, 
Maizie,” said Hazie. “ I know it isn’t, but I don’t 
know what is; not beer server! Sure, there isn’t a 
family like the Porters. And nice to us ; well ! Doc- 
tor Porter’s dying to get a hospital built here; they’re 
going to get up a pay giant to raise money for it, a 
pay giant of Chagford history.” 

“ Pageant, Haze,” Daisy corrected her. “ I got 
that word right from Miss Drummond. I was won- 
dering if the doctor wouldn’t like us to hand over some 
of the land we bought to put the hospital on? We 
don’t need a whole county around our house.” 

“ ’Twould be fine for it, right close to the lake,” 
said Maizie, just as ready to disregard their side of 
the land value as her twin was. “ Maybe he’d let us 
give it to the hospital. It would be nice if we could 
please him some way, when he’s so good to us; they 


THE CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY 161 


all are ! My, but this breeze around the lake is great ! 
If you don’t believe it was hot down there in Boston 
you’re missing a chance to believe what’s so! The 
wind turned east last night and crisped us up some; 
before that we was — were — simply wilted like let- 
tuce that’s laid behind the stove.” 

“ There’s Miss Drummond, sitting out ! ” cried 
Taizie springing to her feet. 

“ Set still, Miss Taizie; or you might be laying 
out,” warned Elijah, putting a hand on Taizie ’s arm. 
“ In a car, like a boat, there’s no manner of use jump- 
ing up and being risky.” 

“ We planned that ! ” cried Daisy with as much 
pride as if it had been a complicated plot. “ We 
thought it would be nice to have her out there when 
you came, so ’t you’d see right off she’s getting well.” 

Miss Drummond waved one of her magazines, the 
only one she had brought down-stairs, at the arrivals. 
She was surprised and pleased to find herself really 
thrilled by the sight of two more Coggs twins coming 
home. It was a delight to know that she was fond 
of these girls, though who could help being? They 
were so unselfish, so affectionate, so kindly impulsive 
and so loyal; truly they were irresistible. It would 
be a hard heart, thought Miss Drummond, that did 
not warm to them who had nursed her so devotedly, 
racking their brains and wearying their feet to find 
and bring her anything that might help her. She was 


162 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


sure the double twins were fond of her. How good 
it was that mutual affection was to be the basis of 
their relation to one another 1 

“ Hullo, Miss Drummond ! ” called Maizie, beam- 
ing delightedly. “ Awful glad you’re out ! ” 

“ Awful glad to see you, too, and to get home,” 
Taizie added, running up the steps and catching Miss 
Drummond in one of her violent embraces. 

Maizie dropped a bunch of long-stemmed roses 
which she carried into Miss Drummond’s hand. 
“ Brought them just for you, but I’ve got other things 
for all you children, and I got us some thin white 
dresses, more like what Mrs. Lawrence would like; 
not so fussed up, Daisy and Hazie. I’ve got some- 
thing for everybody, bought another trunk; it’s on 
the way up, by express. Let’s get cool and clean, 
Taizie, and — supper early, Daisy? We’ve got some 
appetite, believe me! Oh, Miss Drummond, don’t 
mind ! It’s kind of upsetting to come home ! I mean, 
we’re very hungry, really.” 

Miss Drummond laughed. “ I’m not going to de- 
vour you, if you slip into slang, Maizie. These are 
extenuating circumstances ! Don’t you think you girls 
could call me Rhoda? I’m not old, only eleven years 
older than the elder pair of you. Please say Rhoda ! ” 
“How’s that?” Maizie demanded of her twin. 
u Funny, we spoke about it coming up in the car ! 
Daisy wondered if we’d ever be let — wrong? If we 


THE CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY 163 

ever might call you Rhoda ; she said she’d like to. So 
would I. Arid here you are telling us to right off! 
Seems ’s if we did about what we wanted to, all 
around, now ! ” 

“ We’ll go get dressed for supper; will you wait 
here — Rhoda ? ” asked Daisy. 

“ Yes, Daisy dear, I’d like to,” Rhoda answered 
with a smile acknowledging the milestone they had 
just passed on the road to closer intimacy. “ Did you 
notice on the way up what a glorious sunset we had? 
There’ll be a beautiful afterglow.” 

“ Too busy with gas to see sunset! ” laughed Tai- 
zie. “ All right, Rhoda ; you wait here for the after- 
glow, while the rest of us get spruced up.” 

The double twins hurried away leaving Rhoda 
Drummond happy. She was glad to hear her name 
again, for, like all lonely people, she longed for her 
own name, and that “ rest of us,” that Taizie had said, 
that reckoned her as one of the helter-skelter family, 
gave her a comfortable sense of belonging to some 
one. 

Maizie and Taizie’s new trunk appeared while they 
were all at supper, in the last splendor of the gorgeous 
afterglow which Rhoda had promised them. 

Afterward it was opened. Daisy and Hazie were 
greatly pleased with their soft white silk mulls, simply 
made, with no trimming but delicate, fine lace. 

“ You know those white lace-trimmed things we 


164 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

bought our first trip look like heads of cauliflower,” 
remarked Taizie. “ Once you see straight, you don’t 
like fussy diddle things.” Which remark proved how 
fast the twins were moving in the direction of taste, 
for those first purchases were not two months old. 

Rhoda’s gift was an organdie that looked as if it 
had been lifted right out of the bandbox of some Colo- 
nial dame. 

“ We didn’t pick that out,” Maizie confessed. “ We 
got Mrs. Porter to do it for us. She said that mate- 
rial and the pale lavender pattern would just suit 
Rhoda’s pale face and dark eyes; she said she was 
an old-fashioned girl — type, I think she called it, like 
printing.” 

“ I love that gown ! ” Rhoda declared looking more 
girlish than the twins had seen her. “ But you 
mustn’t, dear twins, buy such gifts for me, you 
know ! ” 

“ Why not?” demanded Maizie, troubled in a mo- 
ment. Her new lessons were so puzzling to her that 
she really feared that Rhoda meant she had broken 
some convention. “ They are selling everything 
cheap, now it’s late in June. And why is it wrong to 
get you something, when I do for Daisy and Hazie, 
even for the help? ” 

“ I didn’t mean that, dear ; I meant you are too 
good to me,” Rhoda quickly explained. 

“ Oh, is that all ! ” cried Maizie, relieved. “ Then 


THE CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY 165 

I dare show you the little amethyst pin that goes with 
the dress! We just love to spend; so would you, if 
you hadn’t ever bought a toothpick for any one, be- 
cause you hadn’t the price! I’ve got something for 
every single one I love here — and some I don’t 
more’n like. Say, Daisy, we got a set of dishes for 
Lora’s mother. She wanted it bad. And we picked 
out a Morris chair for Mrs. Deacon, and we bought 
Tommy Giddings the tool chest he was crying for. 
We didn’t know what on earth to buy Doctor Porter, 
but we pitched on a lovely old set of books. The 
storekeeper said they was — were — lovely ; they look 
kind of shabby. They’ve got the queerest name ! 
Treed calf with tools! What do you think of that? ” 

“ Tree calf and tooled, Maizie,” laughed Rhoda. 
“ That’s a beautiful leather with branching marks, like 
a tree, and the edges are tooled, stamped with a nar- 
row design.” 

“ That’s what they are ! ” Maizie affirmed, much 
pleased. “All right, are they? Good! We bought 
a book for Miss Belinda Allaire and a cute little foot 
pillow for her sister. Wait till you see the neglected 
gown we struck for Grandma Emerson ! ” 

“ Isn’t it a negligee, Maizie?” suggested Rhoda. 

Maizie nodded hard. “ Still I’m getting there — 
learning,” she said. 

“ Let’s leave everything just as it is and get out on 
the piazza,” said Taizie. “ Nobody’ll bother the trunk 


166 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


and it’s too nice to light the gas to clear up! Come 
on out. It won’t hurt you, will it, Rhoda? ” 

“ Not a bit ; tiredness was my only complaint, and 
utter discouragement, because I was at the end of my 
purse and of my wits, too, all alone. Now I am use- 
ful, or trying to be, and happy, with four dear girls, 
all alike, to look after me and to be looked after, I am 
almost perfectly well ! Night air can’t harm a person 
who was sick from discouragement ! ” 

Rhoda answered so gaily that she received another 
hug, this time from Hazie. 

Out on the piazza the night was found so beautiful 
that it subdued the high spirits of the double twins. 
Maizie and Taizie were a little tired, but it was chiefly 
the golden beauty of the night that quieted their rat- 
tling tongues. 

The piazza of “ Foster’s Folly ” had not been part 
of the mistakes which had been made in building the 
house. It was broad, a semi-circular front, with 
straight, plain supporting columns. It gave silver 
glimpses of the lake through the glorious trees on the 
lawn and bordering the pretty sheet of water. It al- 
lowed ample room for piazza couches and commodi- 
ous chairs, with no lack of space to swing and rock 
and walk about in. 

“ No, don’t make me lie down to-night,” protested 
Rhoda. “ I want to sit in the very front row of the 
balcony to look at this scene to-night.” 


THE CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY 167 

She drew her chair to the centre of the circular 
sweep of the piazza front and sank into it, with a 
breath of content. 

The double twins drew four chairs around her and 
dropped into them with a similar sigh of content. 

“ Pretty nice,” said Hazie softly. 

The moon, half grown to its fulness, shone just 
below the treetops. Occasionally a small night bird 
uttered a clear, moving note; over beyond, by the 
lake, the whippoorwills sang deliriously, each one un- 
able to yield superior power to his rival. All around 
the house the insect orchestra industriously accom- 
panied them, an ideal accompaniment, unfailing, yet 
unobtrusive. 

“ It’s nicer than nice ! ” said Maizie. “ Miss — 
Rhoda, why do you suppose it’s us ? ” 

It was too lovely a night to correct English. Rhoda 
asked : 

“ You who have been given so much and not some 
one else, Maizie?” 

“ That’s it. There’s lots of girls in those stuffy 
places in New York, where we used to live — and 
here we are ! Even a house like Mrs. Lawrence’s isn’t 
a patch on this piazza and this cool breeze, and all the 
things we hear zizzing and singing ! And those 
packed tenements! Oh, say, why is it us?” Maizie’s 
v-oice sharpened. 

“ Some day we will read a poem that tells of a 


168 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


regiment’s charge into certain death, because it was 
ordered to go. The poem says: 

“ ‘ Theirs not to question why, 

Theirs but to do — and die/ 

We never shall know why we are sent into joy or 
sorrow, Maizie dear. All we have to do is to obey 
orders and do our best, wherever we have to go. But 
I can guess that it is you who are here, so blessed, 
because you are going to use your blessings to bless 
others — as you do for me, dear,” Rhoda answered 
gently. 

“ Well, we’ll try, we’ll honest try,” said Maizie. 

“ It won’t be hard,” said Hazie. “ All we’ve got 
to do is to remember how we used to have it. I guess 
people forget that they’ve got to pay back when they’ve 
got a lot, don’t you? ” 

“ I think we all forget our debts, when we are not 
good; yes, dear Hazie,” said Rhoda. 


CHAPTER IX 


FAILURE AND SUCCESS 

HERE were other topics of conversa- 
tion in Chagford that summer be- 
sides the sale of “ Foster’s Folly ” 
and its purchase by such a surpris- 
ing plural owner as four girls all 
alike and all under sixteen years of life, girls, too, 
who, as Mrs. Evans, the grocer’s wife said, “ had 
come up from the ranks.” 

Mrs. Evans was always plaintive and elegant. Rick 
teasingly told the twins that any one coming up from 
the ranks had to be careful not to bring the rankness 
up with them. 

There was to be a pageant of Chagford’s history 
to raise money to build a hospital for the united 
Chagfords, a project long nearest to Doctor Porter’s 
heart of all his many large-visioned plans. 

Miss Belinda Allaire was the chief mover in the 
arrangements for the pageant. 

Chagford’s history was not greatly different from 
the history of other Massachusetts towns. She had 
begun in the seventeenth century, a little clearing in 
169 



170 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


the wilderness, guarded by a blockhouse from the 
probable attacks of surrounding savages. She had 
grown into a prosperous village of farms and small 
shops till the Revolution had given her full share of 
gallant men and devoted women to the cause of Inde- 
pendence, had grown rapidly through the years when 
the whole country was growing and had made an off- 
shoot in Chagford Falls, the mill town called i-nto 
being by new industries. The Civil War had wrung 
Chagford’s heart and cost her best blood; she had 
had her station of “ the Underground Railroad,” that 
helped escaping slaves to Canada, and had sent her 
sons, and her daughters’ happiness with them, to the 
war. Since then Chagford had done nothing in par- 
ticular, but had done it well ; quietly growing, making 
her schools as good as she could, her library excellent, 
resolutely, somewhat stiffly, upholding her traditions 
and, to a creditable degree, fulfilling her ideals. 

Miss Allaire found good material here for a pag- 
eant; she pressed into the service all the available 
people in all the Chagfords. Nancy Porter was to be 
Takatelka, the Indian girl who, so tradition said, had 
saved the future Chagford, its fate being bound up in 
the lives of the settlers, by coming from her Indian 
village to bring healing herbs, known to her race, to 
the first white men in the forest-clearing when they 
lay ill unto death. 

Miss Allaire had come to ask Maizie, Daisy, Taizie 


FAILURE AND SUCCESS 


171 


and Hazie to represent Religion, Learning, the Law 
and Industry. Her idea was to have the four figures 
in classic drapery standing, one on each corner of a 
float, upholding a frame which should support the 
triangle, symbol of the three Chagfords-in-one, con- 
veying the thought that the civilization and prosperity 
of the Chagfords were founded upon religion, law, 
learning and industry. 

Taizie Coggs laughed when she heard the sugges- 
tion, throwing herself backward with her customary 
movement of abandoning herself to mirth. 

“ Oh, Miss Allaire,” she cried, “ don’t think I’m 
fre — impudent, laughing like that, but it struck me so 
funny! Now, honest, wouldn’t the Coggs twins be 
great dressed up to be things like that? We’ve got 
to be something kind of in the circus line ; we’d queer 
everything being laws and learnings and works, and — 
my goodness ! Religion ! ” 

“That’s right, Miss Allaire; we would,” Maizie 
and Daisy confirmed her. 

“ We’d be — now what was that you said, Rhoda, 
the other day and I made you clear it up? Something 
that is all out of gear with the way things ought to 
be? Not an animal; something that sounds like that, 
though,” Hazie said. 

“ An anomaly,” Rhoda told her, and she and Miss 
Allaire laughed this time. 

“ I do believe you are right, twins,” Miss Allaire 


172 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


said, “ but it seemed like wasting an opportunity not 
to use you, all four alike, as statues on the corners of 
a float. You are adapted to representing something 
more lively, something as modern as can be — but 
what? ” 

“ We don’t know any history to choose from,” said 
Maizie. “Is there anything funny in it?” 

“Nothing funny about history — unless that it is 
so free from amusing things ! ” said Rhoda. “ I 
know ! Let these doublets represent the girls of vari- 
ous races who have come to work in the Chagford 
Falls mills! One could be a Swede, another Irish, 
another French Canadian, another German — ” 

“ That’s it ! ” cried three twins at the same instant. 

“ Dress up like those girls in the old country and 
dance and fool all the way, jigs and jiggings! You’re 
great, Rhoda ! ” Maizie said in solo. 

This was how it happened that when the pageant 
was given the Coggs girls were the only comedians in 
the procession. 

There were two parts of the pageant. The pageant 
proper, the tableaux representing Chagford’s history, 
was given in the afternoon. On the preceding eve- 
ning there was a Water Revel, as Louise Willis had 
christened it, a series of groups on floats resting on 
small boats, shown on the lake by electric light. 

Nancy Porter led the water procession on a small 
boat, its seats covered with a flat flooring of boards. 


FAILURE AND SUCCESS 


173 


She represented “ the Spirit of Chagford,” leading 
the way for all that had befallen the town since its 
beginning. Following her on the succession of floats 
came beautifully costumed and posed living pictures 
of characters in the varied garb of the nearly four 
centuries which had passed over Chagford. 

Many of the costumes were veritable survivals of 
the periods to which they belonged, heirlooms in 
Chagford families. 

The Coggs floats came at the end of the long pro- 
cession, a procession so long that its first end was 
three-quarters around the lake when the last end came 
along, although the pretty body of water wound in 
and out its shores, increasing its length to many times 
its diameter. 

There were two Coggs floats, a pair of twins on 
each. Maizie, costumed as a German peasant girl, in 
short skirts, black bodice, funny cap and long light 
braids, was with Taizie as the Irish colleen, while 
Daisy, in the most picturesque costume of the four, 
was a Swedish peasant, with Hazie as a French Cana- 
dian girl. 

All along the slow progress these two pairs of rep- 
resentatives of immigration to the Chagford Falls 
mills frolicked and danced and sang and carried out 
their conception of their roles with unflagging zest 
and real talent. They were applauded at every foot 
of their passing and the more the applause rang out 


174 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


the wilder grew the twins’ spirits, the livelier they 
danced, the quicker flew their sallies of retort to the 
nonsense shouted to them from the banks of the lake, 
the gayer rang their songs — and they apparently 
had an endless repertory of popular, gay airs, echoes 
from their New York life. 

“ How’d you happen to come to the mills? ” called 
some one, evidently acquainted with the story of Peter 
Debbs’ grandchildren having sought employment in 
his mills before he had admitted their kinship. 

“ Sure who’s a better right?” Taizie, in her char- 
acter of Irish immigrant, called back, her brogue an 
honor to her memory and her skill in imitating. “ It’s 
me Granddad Debbs that’s ownin’ ’um! Faith, ’twas 
ould Pether called me over the seas to ’um. 4 Come, me 
darlin’,’ says he, ‘ come till I hold ye off where I can’t 
be lookin’ at you,’ says he. ‘ I won’t take a look at 
ye,’ says he, ‘for fear I’d see double, thin!’ He 
wanted me that bad I had to come to ’um.” 

Taizie ended this chatter, which she made perfectly 
audible across the water, with a wink that took the 
crowd along the bank into her confidence and began 
to dance a bit of jig, singing: 

“ I hear you calling me,” at a most improperly rapid 
tempo. 

All Chagford knew the Coggs’ story. The people 
who heard this thrust at the twins’ grandfather’s reso- 
lution to keep his grandchildren at a distance, laughed 


FAILURE AND SUCCESS 


175 


and applauded, enjoying the satire. But Taizie had 
no idea of satire; it struck her as a funny thing to 
say and she said it, merely because she was bubbling 
over with the excitement of the pageant, the electric 
lights, the bands, the crowds, the chance to play as 
any lively girl of fourteen would like to play. 

As luck would have it, however, Peter Debbs was 
seated precisely at that point on the curving lake 
shore opposite to which Taizie had been halted a 
moment while she poked fun at him. He turned an 
alarming color, pursed his lips out, snorted, but when 
a timid lady near him ventured to say : “ The child is 
only treating it as a joke; she does not mean it as 
ridicule, exactly, Mr. Debbs. She has no idea you are 
hearing her. They are not much more than children 
and what clever ones ! They are delightfully unspoiled 
and funny. You must be proud of them! ” old Peter 
Debbs swung himself around in his seat, planting his 
back directly toward Taizie’s defender. 

“ Proud of ’em ! Proud of wild, impudent — im- 
pudent ! ” he stammered wrathfully. “ Indeed, ma’m, 
you must think I’ve no sense, because they’re my 
grandchildren and they’re what they are! But I’m 
not so feeble-minded as to be proud of four simple- 
tons, all alike! I’ve given them money enough to 
make them tired soon of living where it’s so quiet; 
they’ll soon enough take themselves off and go to 
rack and ruin spending it, and that’s comforting me.” 


176 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ Oh,” said Taizie’s defender to her husband, seeing 
how worse than useless it was to attempt to placate 
old Peter, “ Oh, what an unnatural, dreadful old man 
he is ! So to resent a young thing’s nonsense, to feel 
so unkindly to his own daughter’s children ! ” 

It happened that there was a girl sitting near old 
Peter Debbs who worked in his mills. She had 
formed a speaking acquaintance with the four twins 
during their brief employment there and had disliked 
them, partly because they were new hands, partly 
because they seemed so unreasonably jolly, partly 
because they formed a friendship with Lora Bruce 
and not with her, chiefly because she had a jealous 
temper, attuned to dislike rather than liking. 

While the double twins’ two floats were bearing 
them on, blissfully enjoying their applause and all the 
fun they were getting and giving, unconscious that 
their grandfather had heard Taizie’s madcap speech, 
which they had forgotten as soon as it was uttered, 
this Lizzie Horn was planning what she told herself 
would be “ a good joke on the stuck-up Coggses.” 

The double twins floated home on waves of joy 
that night, borne along as their floats had been borne 
by the waters of the lake. It was good, unspeakably 
blissful, to see every face smiling at them, to feel the 
kindly pride that Chagford was beginning to take in 
these four funny, youthful heroines of romance. No 
one could have been farther from deserving Lizzie 


FAILURE AND SUCCESS 177 

Horn’s accusation of airiness than the double twins. 
Poor or rich, friendless or liked, they were always 
their simple selves, having just as good a time as they 
possibly could and wanting every one else to share it, 
getting every bit that there was in it out of every 
opportunity that came to them to be happy. More 
than that, they went home so happy that they immedi- 
ately began to plan how to give away to Chagford 
for its hospital many of the beautiful acres which they 
had bought beside the lake. 

“ Sweet-natured, honest, wholesome girls ! ” Doctor 
Porter pronounced them heartily, discussing the Coggs 
twins on his way home with his wife and Nancy. 
“ They are going to make valuable women. Chagford 
will find herself greatly benefited by them in years to 
come — clever, too, they are bright and not in the 
least self-conscious.” 

Thus the great man — for Doctor Porter was 
really a great man — appraised the twins, while envi- 
ous, dull Lizzie Horn condemned them, proving anew 
that a narrow lens cannot reveal the beauty of a large 
object. 

Two days after the pageant a letter arrived at “ the 
palace,” as the double twins nicknamed their big 
house, pending the discovery of a name that it should 
bear. Letters were not frequent at the house. Rhoda 
had been too ill and disheartened to keep up her cor- 
respondence; the twins had no acquaintances in their 


178 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


old life to whom writing a letter not absolutely re- 
quired for a tremendous reason would not have 
seemed like the maddest folly. Notes were beginning 
to arrive from Chagford people, but not yet com- 
monly. 

Maizie took up the letter of that morning and 
scanned it closely. 

“ It’s from Chagford Falls, ” she announced. “ Not 
Lora, not Tommy Giddings, not Mrs. Deacon; I don’t 
know who it’s from, kind of sprawly handwriting, 
looks as if it might stay on this envelope or might 
run over on to any other.” 

Rhoda laughed; Maizie’s characterizations were 
always original. 

“Don’t you suppose the letter is signed?” Rhoda 
hinted. 

“ Apply within,” Maizie said, nodding at her and 
acting on the hint. 

She read the letter, which was not long, several 
times. Her face expressed such blank amaze- 
ment, followed by a flushed excitement, that the 
other three twins protested at being kept in the 
dark. 

“ Read it out, Maize ! ” cried Daisy. “ It’s sure to 
be ours as much as yours. Maybe it’s meant for one 
of us others; no one could tell which one they’d 
seen.” 

“ Sure ; it’s for all of us,” said Maizie, looking up 


FAILURE AND SUCCESS 


179 


with a variety of tints and expressions on her face. 
“ What do you think l From Peter Debbs ! From 
grandfather ! ” 

“ Never ! ” cried the other three girls together. 
“What's up?" added Taizie alone. 

“ My dear Grandchildren : — ” Maizie read by 
way of replying. “ I was pleased by what you done ” 
— “ Ought to be did, oughtn't it, Rhoda ? But he 
isn’t educated either," Maizie paused to comment — 
“ at the entertainment the other night. I am sorry I 
have not let you come to see me. Grandfathers ought 
to get acquainted with their granddaughters. Please 
come to see me as soon as you can. If I happen to 
forget what brings you, just say you come because I 
sent for you. I’m awful forgetful. Yours truly — 
with love — Grandfather Peter Debbs." 

“Well — what — do — you — know — about — 
that ! ” exclaimed Hazie, overwhelmed, while the other 
two stared without a word. 

“ Isn’t it good ! ” cried Rhoda, greatly pleased. 

“ It’s fine ! ” Maizie declared emphatically. “ I’m 
glad it’s all happened this way. I’ve been thinking it 
was a shame for us to take his money — though he 
ought to look out for us — and not have him get a bit 
of good of us. Stands to reason an old man, all alone, 
would get a lot out of a bunch of jolly kids like us, if 
only he made up his mind to take it. Of course we’d 
rather be let alone to go as you please, but it’d be 


180 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


sort of good to pay him back some of it. I dread like 
anything to go there, but I’m glad he’s sent for 
us.” 

“ Well, Maize,” said candid Taizie, “ that’s all right 
to feel like that, but I’m willing to own up I could 
get along fine all my days without any old man to tie 
us up. But I’ll do my part, straight and fair, and try 
to like it. Being real grand and noble isn’t my long 
suit; having free fun is. Still, maybe when I see our 
grandfather getting chippered up from us, perhaps 
I’ll swallow my dose and lick my lips and ask for 
more.” 

“ Taizie always says what the rest think, but can’t 
come right out with,” said Daisy. “ It’s nice to be 
as we are, just as free as hoptoads in the garden, but 
we won’t be sorry to let Peter Debbs know we’re 
thankful we have a garden, if we can do anything 
nice for him.” 

Hazie looked thoughtful. “ Maizie meant being 
glad in your head though you may not feel jumpy- 
hearted; I see! We’ll all be like that when we get 
at it,” she said. 

Rhoda Drummond laughed and laughed. She 
laughed so much and so heartily that it was no wonder 
that she gained strength and was growing prettier 
and brighter-eyed every day. 

“ When shall you go to see your grandfather?” 
she asked. 


FAILURE AND SUCCESS 181 

“ The sooner the better, more polite, isn't it ? ” said 
Maizie. “To-day?" 

“ I would. You won't ask me to go with you? I’m 
willing to go, but it would be better to go without me," 
Rhoda advised. 

“ We’d better go all by our little Coggs selves," said 
Daisy. “ And walk. We might go in the car part 
way, ’cause it’s pretty far, but leave it somewhere and 
go on foot, like — I don’t know — not as if we were 
showing off." 

“ That’s it, Daisy ! And not dress up too much, 
look nice, but not — " 

“ Gaudy," Taizie cut in. “ Right after lunch we’ll 
start, then. We must get Ceescy to give us hearty 
stand-bys! True’s I live, I dread going like ginger! 
If he’s crabbed we’ll get scared, and if he’s grand- 
fathery won’t we feel silly, not knowing him and 
all!" 

After lunch the double twins made ready for their 
visit. They could not be blamed for feeling — as 
Daisy said they did — nervous. It was a great step 
to be going to meet their grandfather, their one living 
relative, and the twins minded it much more than they 
would have if they had met him when they first came 
to Chagford, for in this time they had awakened to a 
sense of many things which they had not then known. 
They made a simple, girlish toilet, all four similarly 
clad in one of the sheer white gowns which Maizie 


182 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


and Taizie had been taught to select during their visit 
to Mrs. Lawrence in Boston. 

Elijah took them down past the lake and over to 
Chagford Falls. Rhoda went with them as far as 
Grandma Emerson’s, but they proceeded on their way 
alone. 

Leaving Elijah and the car, they gathered up their 
delicate white draperies and picked their way daintily 
through the streets which in Chagford Falls were 
always more dusty than in old shady Chagford proper. 

Peter Debbs lived in a small house with a house- 
keeper and her one assistant to look after him. He 
had begun life a poor man and the preferences of his 
first formed tastes clung to him. Acquiring great 
wealth had not changed his determination to “ live 
comfortable and no bother,” as he put it. 

Consequently when the four grandchildren, who 
were all that he had left of what may best make life 
worth living, duties, ties, kindred, stood upon his 
doorstep and twisted the queer little cast iron knob of 
the bell that sounded like an alarm clock and was 
fastened in the middle panel of the door, it was Peter 
Debbs himself whom they aroused from a nap and 
summoned to his feet to open the door. 

Peter Debbs was decidedly grumpy and grouchy by 
nature, increasing years and an existence without af- 
fection or object had not sweetened him, being awa- 
kened from a nap in the warmest part of a very warm 



' 

























. 























FAILURE AND SUCCESS 


183 


afternoon made nothing better. Old Peter opened the 
door — which stuck irritatingly — with a growl in his 
throat. 

The growl died there, choking him. He stood 
silent, scowling horribly, at the four terrified, flaming 
young faces before him. 

Neither host nor guests spoke. One was too furi- 
ous to speak, the others too frightened. 

“ Who’re you ? Don’t tell me ! I don’t want to 
know. What brings you — how dare you come here ? 
I told that shyster lawyer from New York what I’d 
do, and to keep you ofif from me. I won’t do another 
thing for you; you’ve got enough. Don’t you dare 
come round my house, not once,” Old Peter managed 
to say at last, his face so purple that the twins began 
to forget their original fear in the more pressing one 
that he might topple over before them, dead of 
apoplexy. 

“ We didn’t come wanting any more,” cried Taizie, 
recovering sufficiently to defend the Coggs twins, as 
usual first of them to find her tongue. “ We’ve got 
a great deal more’n we need. Don’t you get so ex- 
cited; what makes you? It’ll hurt you. We never’d 
thought of coming if you hadn’t written and told us 
to. Take us easy and don’t get so upset, Grandfather 
Debbs.” 

Taizie spoke in all honesty of purpose, to soothe 
her grandfather, but her bidding him not excite him- 


184 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


self seemed to have a most dismayingly contrary 
effect. The veins stood out in his face and he sput- 
tered, striving vainly after speech. Evidently he was 
a most fearfully irascible old man. The twins stared 
at him, badly frightened, but no less amazed that he 
should send for them and then take their coming in 
this way. 

Hazie pulled Maizie’ s sleeve. “ Let’s go,” she 
whispered. 

“ What — what do you mean by saying I wrote 
you, you saucy girl? ” he shouted in a sort of explo- 
sion. “ How dare you tell me I wrote you, to my 
face, to my face! Which one of you made fun of 
me on the lake the other night? To my face, too! 
Was it you? Bid you come to me! And you dare 
tell me I wrote you ? Be off ! What have I ever done 
to deserve four dancing, impudent grandchildren, all 
alike? I’ll send for you fast enough, when I want 
you! The brazen story! I suppose you think this is 
funny! Take yourselves off, and leave me in peace. 
If ever I should have wanted you this would settle it.” 

“ But you did write us ! ” cried Maizie, Daisy and 
Hazie in one breath the instant he paused. “ You 
told us to remind you of your letter in case you for- 
got, because you were forgetful. Here’s the letter,” 
Maizie continued, no longer afraid because she was 
too amazed to feel any consciousness of herself. 

Old Peter Debbs thrust the letter, which Maizie 


FAILURE AND SUCCESS 


185 


held out to him, away with a furious gesture. “ I 
won’t look at it. There’s nothing to see ! I never 
wrote it! Be off !” he shouted. 

The double twins turned and fled. There was no 
doubt about it; their grandfather was a madman. 
They had no desire, before they reached this conclu- 
sion, to linger on his steps, facing his incomprehensible 
wrath, but flight from an old man who was not sane 
became a pressing duty. The four girls went down 
the street as fast as their feet would carry them, not 
wasting a breath on voicing the astonishment that 
arose above all other feelings in regard to this visit. 

“Why on foot? Why so fleet of foot?” called a 
voice behind them. 

They paused and turned to see Doctor Porter dri- 
ving steady old Tonic in the same direction in which 
they were going. 

“ Oh, Doctor Porter ! ” cried Maizie. “ I guess you 
ought to go back and see Grandfather Debbs. He 
wrote us and told us to come and see him and, good- 
ness knows, we didn’t want to go, but we went and he 
carried on something awful, got so purple he looked 
like a poor old plum, and he is — plum crazy! He 
yelled at us, told us to be off, and said he never wrote 
us! Here’s his letter ! He’s just as crazy as the cra- 
ziest quilt you ever saw. Hadn’t you better see him? ” 

“ I wish I could take you home,” said Doctor 
Porter. 


186 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“The car’s down here, with Elijah; we left it,” 
said Taizie. 

“ Pile yourselves into the buggy somehow, one on 
another’s lap, one in the middle, one on the floor and 
I’ll take you to your car. Let me see that letter,” 
said the doctor. 

The twins gladly packed themselves into the buggy, 
as Doctor Porter bade them, feeling him a rock in 
a desert land. Maizie offered the letter they had re- 
ceived for his inspection. 

The doctor read it with raised eyebrows. He 
folded it and returned it to Maizie with a smile. 

“ I don’t wonder the old man was considerably sur- 
prised by your visit, nor that he doubted your truth- 
fulness. I think he never saw this letter, my dears,” 
he said. 

“ But who — ” began Daisy. 

“ A practical joke, played by some one who enjoys 
mischief, or else who has a grudge against you, or old 
Peter,” said the doctor. “ I’ll make a point of ex- 
plaining to him that I saw the letter and can testify 
to your having been deceived. I think I can prevent 
its doing you harm with him. Queer affair, however ! 
Of course you don’t know your grandfather; if you 
knew him you’d know that letter was not his. Put 
the unpleasant adventure out of your minds for a 
while. Aren’t we Chagfordians immensely proud of 
the net result of our pageant ? ” 


FAILURE AND SUCCESS 


187 


“ Yes, we are,” said Taizie. “ That’s another 
thing. Grandfather Peter Debbs must have heard 
what I said about how my grandfather called me over 
from Ireland, wanting so bad to see me — I was the 
Irish emigrant girl, you know. How’d I know he was 
’round ? Anyhow, it was all fun ! ” 

“ Perhaps that suggested the letter to some one,” 
said Doctor Porter, hitting the nail on the head. “ It’s 
a mistake to come too near to facts in jest, Taizie, 
even to a twist of them. But we are to have a hospi- 
tal, doublets ! That’s the predominant thought in my 
mind to-day ! ” 

“ Doctor Porter, won’t you please let us give 
some land for it ? ” said Maizie, speaking in a voice 
so subdued, with a manner so meek that one might 
have thought she was confessing a wrong, instead of 
pleading to be allowed to do a generous deed. The 
twins were always much embarrassed if they were 
suspected of good actions. 

“ Up at the upper end of the lake it’s real nice, 
kind of higher and sunny — and shady, too. We’ve 
been talking about it. Rhoda thinks it’ll be all right, 
if we want to, and we do. We’ll have fifty acres 
more’n we want. We got Mr. Ri — Elijah — to 
measure off what that would be and we don’t need it 
one bit. Will you make them take it, Doctor, dear? 
And don’t say much, don’t let them make a fuss; it 
isn’t as if it would do us any good.” 


188 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


The smile on Doctor Porter’s lips, the warm light 
in the eyes that he bent upon Maizie from beneath the 
brows which the twins called “ knobby,” were as elo- 
quent of gratitude as the strongest vote of thanks 
could have been. 

“ Dear little doublets,” said the good doctor, “ you 
know, without my telling you, that if the land were 
given there not only would be a great deal more money 
in hand to build with, but the work could begin at 
once. It would be a good deed — in a double sense 
— giving that deed for land, twin Coggs girls! But 
it is my bounden duty to tell you that the land is in- 
creasing in value along the lake faster than in any 
other part of Chagford and that while you think now 
that such a generous gift will not count greatly, one 
of these days you may wish that you had not curtailed 
your property. You may each wish to have a home 
of your own some day, my dears, and regret that you 
have given away the only land available along the 
lake.” 

“ Then we’ll buy it somewhere else, along the post 
office, on Main Street ! ” laughed Maizie. “ What’ll 
we care? Besides, we don’t have to have four homes 
unless we marry, and we don’t want to break ourselves 
up marrying ; it’s so nice to be four unmarried maiden 
twin ladies! If we did get so silly as to be willing to 
separate, why then I think the land ought to be brought 
along with the husband. So the Chagford Hospital 


FAILURE AND SUCCESS 189 

gets fifty acres to be built on from your ‘ ladies of the 
lake,’ Doctor Porter.” 

“ In common gratitude they should be all Chag- 
ford’s — all three Chagfords’, especially all sick and 
suffering Chagford’s — 4 ladies of the lake ’ as well as 
mine,” said the doctor. He laid a hand on Maizie’s 
shoulder and guided Tonic into the street where Hazie 
said that Elijah waited with the car. 

“ Just a few weeks ago, five months, for you came 
here in the spring and this is September, no one in 
Chagford knew more of you than that you were four 
rosy, ruddy-haired, rather frowzy girls, possible 
heroines of an unusual story, likable, but not particu- 
larly important little townswomen. And already you 
are part of Chagford’s life, improved more than you 
can gauge, getting known and loved and respected; 
more than that, you are to be public benefactors ! Isn’t 
that a wonderful record for the first half year? ” The 
doctor turned Tonic to allow the twins to get out of 
the twin-full buggy and smiled as he spoke, but he 
meant what he said seriously. 

The Coggs girls went happily toward their waiting 
car, waving their hands back to the beloved doctor. 
He was right! It was a record for less than half a 
year! They were accomplishing their end, growing 
up into their place, though Peter Debbs did drive 
them from him furiously. They went home happy, 
in spite of the disastrous visit and their hurt pride. 


CHAPTER X 


THE MILLS FIRE 

HE Coggs twins grew older girl- 
ishly. They did not want to grow 
up, but if they had wanted to they 
would hardly have known how to go 
about it ; they were too light-hearted 
to be anything but youthful, for the essence of grow- 
ing up seems to be to lose the ability to play. 

Yet the days slipping over them into months were 
leaving their impress on the four merry girls, a suc- 
cession of small impressions that, taken together, 
were stamping them as fit to pass current among those 
things and people to which their Grandfather Debbs’ 
wealth admitted them. 

When Maizie and Daisy were eighteen, and Taizie 
and Hazie seventeen, they had grown into most at- 
tractive girls. No amount of effort could ever make 
them conventional; no one who loved them wanted 
them made so. 

They had learned to speak, in the main, correctly, 
to behave as “ nice girls ” behaved, but they were 
breezy, impetuous, outspoken, always themselves, un- 
190 



THE MILLS FIRE 


191 


like any one else. Chagford had learned to call them 
“ original,” and to take great pride in their sayings 
and doings. All three Chagford towns benefited by 
their generosity and loved them. In the three years 
that they had lived in Chagford the Coggs twins had 
become one of the institutions of their adopted 
home. 

Rhoda Drummond was not only invaluable to them ; 
she had grown very dear to them. In turn the double 
twins were as dear to Rhoda as younger sisters could 
have been. Life in “ the palace,” as the twins called 
their big lakeside house, was wonderfully pleasant; 
the attitude of all four Coggs girls toward growing 
up was defensive — they feared lest some day might 
bring a change in their present happiness. They were 
good-looking girls, wholesome “ sonsy,” with their 
ruddy hair always flying, giving the effect of faces 
seen through sun rays, much as one sees gnats in the 
sun. Their complexions were fresh and clear, the 
color always coming and going under the brilliant 
white of their skin ; their eyes were bright and laugh- 
ing, their lips almost always parted in a smile that was 
the embodiment of good nature and which revealed 
white, even, strong teeth that increased their effect of 
abounding health. They dressed well, quietly now, 
in well-chosen, fine materials and colors, yet somehow 
they contrived to produce the effect of being always 
a trifle over-dressed. 


192 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

The Coggs twins were over-emphatic in every di- 
rection, but those who loved them would not willingly 
have given up the least of their exaggerations, and 
most people loved the girls who were, like Kim, 
“ friends to all the world.” 

Hazie had developed into the quietest one of the 
four, quiet, however, only by comparison. She cared 
to read ; it was mainly due to her that books, bought 
to use and form acquaintance with them, began to fill 
the empty library shelves of “ the palace.” Maizie 
studied; she had proved ambitious to learn and she, 
also, liked to read. Daisy was the most domestic one 
of the quartette, while Taizie’s talents, as she herself 
truthfully said, “ ran to whooping it up.” Taizie 
learned things through her pores; she imitated, was 
quick-witted, so was sure to get on, but she managed 
to fill every hour of her day with about ninety sec- 
onds of fun, and to dodge work. 

The twins had never again made an attempt to be 
dutiful grandchildren after their one, disastrous visit 
to Peter Debbs. The old man did not alter his de- 
cision to provide for the twins without seeing them 
and the girls had settled down gratefully to the free- 
dom this allowed them, without conscience-pricks as 
to neglected duties. 

The writer of the letter which had purported to 
come from their grandfather was never discovered. 
The double twins gave it no thought after a day or 


THE MILLS FIRE 193 

two, and now the adventure was three years in the 
past. 

Nancy Porter had been given a sitting-room as her 
sixteenth birthday present. Her father had built out 
and enlarged a small room in the Porter house for 
Nancy’s own private use. It was to be furnished with 
genuine old furniture, and the doctor’s patients had 
begged to be allowed to contribute this from their 
stores of heirlooms. Chagford was one of the old 
mahogany towns. The room had not been finished in 
time for Nancy to take possession in October, on her 
birthday, but now, in late November, it was ready for 
her and the twins had been asked down to a funny 
housewarming. 

“ It’s really a reception to the new-old furniture, 
because we are going to see it moved in. Most people 
fix up their rooms and then ask people to see them; 
Nancy knows what fun it is to watch things un- 
wrapped, so she does it this way,” said Hazie. 

“ Let’s look at the rug once more,” suggested Tai- 
zie. “ Then roll it up for good.” 

The Coggs girls had decided upon a rug as their 
contribution to Nancy’s room. Not only did they 
love sweet Nancy more than any and all other of the 
Chagford girls, but they were profoundly grateful to 
her for all the countless benefits Nancy had quietly 
conferred upon them from the first, benefits which 
every day of their growing understanding of their 


194 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


world made them appreciate more. Nancy’s word 
was law, her influence paramount with all the girls 
in Chagford best worth knowing. When she consti- 
tuted herself the Coggs twins’ friend she opened the 
way to the friendship of all the other Chagford girls. 
In numberless ways she had put herself unobtrusively 
between the twins and ridicule while they were still 
inexperienced. The twins would have gone through 
fire and water for Nancy with cheerful courage. 

As to Doctor Porter and Mrs. Porter, the Coggs 
girls felt that they could not live long enough, nor 
feel and do enough to prove their loving gratitude to 
them both. 

“ Taizie, you’ve looked at that rug till I’m pretty 
sure it’s thin ! ” cried Daisy. But she was on her feet 
as she spoke, more than ready to see the rug once 
more. 

“ We don’t club together and pay two thousand 
dollars for a present every day,” said Maizie. “ I 
never was so surprised in my life as I was when I was 
told that rug’s price, but I see now why it is so costly 
and why it is beautiful. I do hope it’s right ! ” 

“If you and Taizie had picked it out alone, it 
might be a sell, as well as a sale, but as long as Mrs. 
Lawrence took you to the best dealer in Boston and 
helped you pick it out, it can’t be wrong. Mrs. Porter 
will like it, if she knows Mrs. Lawrence selected it,” 
said Hazie. 


THE MILLS FIRE 


195 


They all repaired to the drawing-room where the 
great rug lay spread out, its soft old Colors and ex- 
quisite texture mercifully obliterating the carpet 
which the Coggs girls had acquired with the house. 

“ Rhoda ! ” called Daisy going to the door. 
“ Rhoda, come down! We’re looking at the rug 
again.” 

Rhoda came, holding her fluttering kimono together 
as she ran. She looked five years younger than she 
had three years before, when Nancy had brought her 
and the twins together, a pretty, graceful, charming 
young woman. 

“ I was just getting dressed for the party,” she 
said. “Anything wrong? You haven’t discovered a 
defect in the rug, have you?” 

“ No, indeed. Just liking it better and wanted you 
to help us do it,” laughed Maizie. 

“ We’re going to roll it up to take to Nancy now. 
Isn’t it nice? ” 

“ It’s much more than nice,” said Rhoda, with a 
smile that gently reminded the twins how many times 
she had made the same answer to the same question. 

“If you don’t make haste, doublets dear, you won’t 
be dressed in time to do so much as get home from 
Nancy’s party.” 

Four exceedingly well-dressed, nice-looking girls 
joined Rhoda in a surprisingly short time to go to 
Nancy’s deferred birthday installation. 


196 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Elijah ran the car down to Mimi Hunt’s where 
Rhoda and the twins left it, dispatching him back for 
the rug. The Willis girls, Louise grown up and Ama- 
bel gloriously handsome, Doris Clark and Cord were 
already there and the girls all walked down to Doctor 
Porter’s together. 

Nancy hailed them joyously and made them crowd 
into the deep window-seats of her new room because, 
at this funny party, the furniture was to come after 
the guests. It really was a reception, as Nancy said, 
a reception to the fine old furniture which had been 
sent for the new room by the doctor’s patients and 
Nancy’s friends. Mrs. Lawrence had sent from her 
Boston house, rich in venerable furnishing, a desk that 
Warren had used not long before he fell at Bunker 
Hill, and a silver porringer made by Paul Revere. 
Nancy was wild with delight over these wonders 
which the men were bringing in from the van when 
the girls arrived and which Letty Hetty was setting 
free from their wrappings with scissors and knife, 
refusing to allow any one to help her in the task. 
Waiting the arrival of their rug was not the joyous 
expectation to which the Coggs girls had looked for- 
ward. They began to feel almost downhearted — for 
the double twins, that is. It was like their innate un- 
worldliness to forget the great value of the rug and 
to begin to fear it might be unworthy of Nancy’s 
room, to join the beautiful survivals of early Amer- 


THE MILLS FIRE 197 

ican days which were coming into the room from the 
van at the gate. 

When the car came down the street and Elijah skil- 
fully ran it in a foot beyond the fore tires of the van, 
the double twins looked at Maizie and she arose so 
uncomfortably embarrassed that she hardly seemed 
one of the confident Coggs. 

“ We haven’t any ancestral stuff, you know, 
Nancy,” she said. “ We didn’t know what to get so 
we got a rug — Wait ! Of course you didn’t want us 
to get anything, but we’d die, all four quarters of us 
at once, if we weren’t in this room, somehow! Taizie 
and I went down and got your Aunt Mary Lawrence 
to help us pick it out. We think it must be all right, 
as long as she thinks so. Hadn’t we better have it 
brought in before you get everything in place ? These 
old pieces look as though they’d never move after- 
ward.” 

Hazie ran to the window and excitedly beckoned to 
Elijah to bring in the rug. Letty Hetty ran out to help 
him balance the heavy burlaped roll on his shoulder 
and when it had come in she ripped the wrapping open 
with such haste that the silky rug rolled out over the 
floor in almost no time. 

Mrs. Porter looked at the rug aghast. “ My dears, 
my dears ! ” she cried. “ You should not have bought 
a rug of such value for Nancy ! ” 

“ Now, what’s one rug among four girls, and girls 


198 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


who don’t have to do a thing but be snubbed grand- 
daughters, drawing a salary for being snubbed?” de- 
manded Taizie. “ What do you suppose there is in 
Boston good enough for any Porter?” 

“ That’s the point ! ” chimed in Maizie. “ My 
younger sister has put it beautifully! If you don’t 
like the rug, you’re to say so, so truthfully that the 
Warren desk won’t be ashamed of you, and back 
it goes to the dealer and whatever you like better 
waltzes straight to Chagford.” 

“ Like it!” cried Nancy, kneeling on the glorious 
rug that covered the floor to exactly the right depth 
of wood margin. “ Like it ! ” 

“ I was brought up on ingrain carpet in the best 
room and braided rugs in the chambers,” observed 
Letty Hetty, who always had her say in whatever was 
discussed in the doctor’s household, “ so I’m not to 
say qualified to speak on antic rugs, but I should say 
this was not a rug to clean by anything more ordinary 
than a silk rag, on your knees, not even a vacuum, 
electric run.” 

The double twins looked greatly relieved. “ Well, 
if you like it ! ” Daisy said. 

Nancy arose from her intimate investigation of the 
rug and disappeared; Letty Hetty, seeing that the 
excitement of the afternoon was too much for the 
little maid, that Nancy was white and that tears were 
near falling, afforded an avenue of escape by asking 


THE MILLS FIRE 


199 


her help with the good things which that invaluable 
foundation of the Porter household had made for 
Nancy’s installation party. 

Rick Lovering was so late in coming home that 
the girls began to wonder what could be keeping 
him. 

“ I’m getting afraid something has happened to 
Rick,” said Nancy, looking out for the unnumbered 
time to see if Rick was not in sight. “ He never 
would be late to-day if he could help it; he knows I 
wanted him to see the things come in and now he 
should be playing for us. It’s bad enough to have 
father late, but you never can count on a doctor. I 
do wish Richie would hurry ! ” 

“ Here is Rick ! ” cried Mrs. Porter, a little later, 
and she, too, looked relieved. 

Nancy ran out to meet Rick. The boy was coming 
slowly, with dragging feet; his beautiful face was 
white, but Nancy was too full of happiness to see it. 
Within the room she had left the girls heard her say : 
“ How late you are! Oh, Rick, what’s the matter? ” 
with a sharp change in her voice as terror gripped her 
when she consciously saw Rick’s face. 

“ Where is the doctor?” cried Mrs. Porter run- 
ning after Nancy at the sound of fear in her voice. 

“ There has been a fire at Chagford Mills,” said 
Rick painfully. “ There was an explosion — ” He 
stopped. 


200 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ The doctor — ” Mrs. Porter could not frame the 
question. 

“ Hurt/ 5 said Rick choking. 

Mrs. Porter swayed as she stood, Nancy fell back 
against the wall, holding her throat with both hands, 
staring at Rick with terrified eyes. 

“ Mother, no ! ” Rick cried. “ He is not dead. It 
is — his eyes.” 

“ Not blinded! Not daddy! Not my dearest, 
dearest daddy! ” the girls heard Nancy cry so hoarsely 
that they would not have known that it was silver- 
voiced Nancy who thus implored mercy by the pro- 
testing question. 

The double twins caught one another’s hands and 
gathered around Rhoda in wordless horror. Each of 
Nancy’s guests sat motionless, tense, waiting. Not 
one there that did not love Doctor Porter, not one 
that did not owe to those kind eyes of his not only 
health of body, through his perception of their needs, 
but peace of mind and happiness, for Doctor Porter’s 
eyes revealed to him the requirements of mind and 
heart and soul quite as truly as of body. 

While Mrs. Porter and Nancy at the door were 
groping in the darkness which would shroud them 
hardly less than the doctor, were he blind, striving to 
see the way to bear so great a sorrow, and their friends 
suffered with them in Nancy’s new treasure-filled 
room, the doctor came home. 


THE MILLS FIRE 


201 


The double twins heard him going slowly to the 
library. Hands tightened upon other hands in Nancy’s 
room, but no one spoke nor moved. 

At last they heard the doctor coming down the hall 
with his wife and Nancy. No one had attempted to 
go away; the Misses Allaire and Grandma Emerson 
had stayed, hoping to be able to help Mrs. Porter in 
this first, awful hour. The girls had stayed because 
they did not know how to go, nor whether Nancy 
might not be comforted by their presence. 

But when they saw the beloved doctor’s figure, a 
little bowed, as he hesitated in the doorway, his hand 
on Nancy’s shoulder, not knowing where to turn to 
greet the friends whom he knew must be before him, 
and when they saw Nancy’s blanched, agonized face, 
Daisy, Taizie and Hazie sprang to their feet, looking 
wildly around for an avenue of escape from the un- 
bearable sight. Taizie threw open a window behind 
her with a groan and jumped out of it upon the lawn 
below, and Daisy and Hazie instantly followed her. 

The three girls sat down under a tree, utterly re- 
gardless of their newest frocks and cried tempestu- 
ously, while they waited for Rhoda and Maizie, who 
had remained. 

When Maizie joined them, as she did in a few 
minutes, she showed how much she needed the relief 
of tears which the other girls had been having. She 
had been crying, too, but with the painful effort to 


202 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

restrain the weeping which heightens, not lessens, the 
nerve strain. She had torn her handkerchief in tat- 
ters and had been forced to dry her eyes upon her 
skirt, so that she presented a bedraggled and exhausted 
appearance when she came out upon the lawn, though 
her sisters were past noting it. Rhoda, too, looked as 
if she had passed through severe illness. Her devo- 
tion to the doctor and his family was great in pro- 
portion to her need of help when they had helped 
her. 

“ We may as well go home,” said Daisy mourn- 
fully. “ To think Nancy’s party ended like this ! ” 

“ To think Doctor Porter’s great life of usefulness 
has ended like this!” Hazie said. 

“ His life of usefulness is not ended; to live and 
to do good are one and the same with Doctor Porter,” 
Rhoda amended. “ But, oh, it is hard, hard ! ” 

“ Don’t you think he would like us to go around 
by the mills and see if we can do anything for any one 
who may have been hurt in the fire? Rick said an 
engineer was hurt. As long as we worked there, even 
a little while, and as long as our grandfather owns 
the mills and gives us enough to help with, though he 
doesn’t make us much his partners, I think Doctor 
Porter would like us to go around there. If he’s — 
hurt — ” Maizie would not utter the fateful word — 
“ we’ve got to do every single thing he’d like us to do, 
to the longest day we live, so he’ll know we care.” 


THE MILLS FIRE 


203 


“ That’s the best possible way to prove that you 
care, Maizie dear,” said Rhoda. “ And that is a beau- 
tiful instinct, to remember your twofold connection 
with the mills. Isn’t it, other girls ? ” 

“ Maizie’s always right, pretty much,” said Taizie 
listlessly. “ It may do us good to try to find some- 
thing to do.” 

The double twins and Rhoda walked softly around 
the house, as if it were a bed of suffering which they 
might jar. Silently they took their places in the car 
and frowned at its noise of starting. 

“ Do take off the noise, Elijah,” begged Hazie as 
they rolled down the street. 

As they drew near the mills they thought at first 
that no damage was visible; farther along they saw 
the staring windows denuded by the explosion, and 
a smoke-blackened end wall and water dripping down 
it showed where the trouble had lain. 

“ It’s our old room ! ” cried Daisy arousing to a 
little interest. 

They found Mr. Dermot looking old and grey. 
With him in the office sat Tommy Giddings, now 
almost a young man. The tray on the desk showed 
that they had been having coffee, sent in from out- 
side, while their serious faces showed that they had 
been discussing the disaster. 

“ Hullo, girls,” said Tommy sadly. 

But Mr. Dermot looked glad to see them. “ Per- 


204 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


haps they’ll have a suggestion to make, Tom,” he 
said. “ They’re the very ones.” 

“ We came to see if there was anything we could 
do for any one,” said Maizie. “We were at Doctor 
Porter’s when he came home — ” she paused, cho- 
king. 

“ Is it as bad as he and Doctor Davidson feared? ” 
asked Mr. Dermot, while Tommy turned away with 
a groan. They both knew and loved the doctor. 

The twins nodded. “ They think so. They are 
going to Boston to find out. Anything here we could 
do? You said, when we came in — ” Maizie paused. 

“ A girl has been hurt. She has no one belonging 
to her and the hospital isn’t done. We were wonder- 
ing where to send her. She never would join with the 
mills’ insurance plan, for accidents and sickness. 
She’s Lizzie Horn, works in the room with Lora 
Bruce, the room that had the honor of the brief pres- 
ence of the Coggs twins.” Mr. Dermot tried to smile, 
but failed dismally. 

Maizie shook her head. “ Don’t know her, but — 
what can we do for her? Shall we see her and find 
out? ” she asked. 

“Will you?” Mr. Dermot’s relief was manifest. 
He arose at once and led the way through the smoke- 
scented corridors, to the room which had lately been 
added to the mills for the mill girls’ use for rest and 
recreation. It had been fitted up by an unknown bene- 


THE MILLS FIRE 205 

factor, but the Coggs twins’ accounts would have en- 
lightened an investigator. 

On a couch lay Lizzie Horn, her arms bound with 
oil and cotton, the side of her face swathed, her hair 
cut off on that side. 

The girls did not remember her name, but they 
recognized her as a girl who had been there during 
their brief time in the mills and they crossed to her 
with pitying faces and hands extended, till they saw 
that Lizzie could not clasp them. 

Lora Bruce, rising from Lizzie’s side, grasped the 
outstretched hands instead. 

“ Oh, twins dear, we might all have died and Lizzie 
has barely escaped,” she said. 

“ We’re so sorry! We’re hardly able to bear it,” 
Maizie said. “ Doctor Porter, you know, is — We’re 
going to help you somehow, Lizzie, but you’ve got to 
tell us how.” 

Lizzie glanced toward the Coggs twins with her one 
unbandaged eye, and swiftly looked away, closing 
it. 

“ There’s enough to be done, but you can’t do it,” 
she muttered. 

“ We keep the room we had at Mrs. Deacon’s, you 
know. Maybe you could use it? It’s a reading-room 
for people who haven’t any books at home, people 
like us when we came here,” said Maizie. “ Why 
can’t we close the room for reading awhile, and put 


206 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Lizzie Horn in there — with a nurse, of course — 
twinsies? ” 

“ Can,” said Taizie briefly, visibly brightening at 
the prospect of usefulness. 

“ That’ll be nice for you, Lizzie, and Mrs. Deacon 
will love it; she likes so to quiddle and make things,” 
Maizie went on. 

Lizzie Horn began to cry. “ I never could stand 
you Coggs twins,” she said, to the Coggs twins’ man- 
ifest amazement, for they did not remember anything 
about Lizzie except that they had seen her. “ I got 
it into my head when you worked here that you were 
stuck-up and horrid. I thought you made game of 
everybody. I thought it was awful when I heard you 
had got rich, that you were old Mr. Debbs’ grand- 
daughters. I wrote that letter signed with Peter 
Debbs’ name, telling you he wanted you to come to 
see him. I heard it made him awful mad that you 
went. I guess I settled any chance there was of his 
being decent to you. So I guess you don’t want to 
help me out now I’m burned — and serve me right ! ” 

The double twins - — Rhoda was waiting in the car 
below, to be called if she were needed — stood in 
utter surprise, silently hearing and digesting this un- 
expected confession. That a girl whom they did not 
know should have been filled with jealous dislike of 
them, should have attributed to them feelings least of 
all theirs and have written that letter, not as a prac- 


THE MILLS FIRE 


207 


tical joke, as they had assumed it to have been writ- 
ten, but spitefully, to harm them, were facts which 
slowly filtered into the minds of the friendly double 
twins, at once horrifying them and amazing them. 
Rich and poor, they had lived in the world merrily, 
confidingly, friendly, and they had found the world 
reflecting their attitude toward it — as most of us do. 
It shocked them to discover that all this time this girl 
had disliked them, cordially and unjustly. 

Taizie was the first to find her tongue. She shook 
her shoulders with a slight movement of freeing her- 
self from something, much as a spaniel shakes off 
water. 

“ Oh, well ; that’s ancient history now. What’s 
the use? You’re sorry,” she said. 

“ And your burns are the modernest kind of his- 
tory,” added Hazie. 

“ Queerest thing you took such notions about us, 
but maybe we bothered you,” Daisy contributed this 
charitable remark to the double twins’ reception of her 
tale. 

“ It hasn’t anything to do with your taking that 
room. We wouldn’t be quite such dunces as to hold a 
grudge. It all happened ages ago, anyhow. Lora, 
how’ll we get Lizzie around there? Send Tommy to 
tell Mrs. Deacon she’s coming?” Maizie asked, turn- 
ing to Lora with an air that disposed forever of past 
wrongs and ill-feeling. 


208 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Lizzie burst out crying and Maizie bent down over 
her, afraid to touch her, but gently stroking her skirt. 

“ Don’t cry, Lizzie,” she said. “ We don’t mind at 
all. Grandfather Debbs never’d have been chummy, 
anyway. To be honest, we like being let alone, as 
long as we know we aren’t getting our own way 
through being mean to get it. Don’t think of that 
silly time again. We’re going to settle that room busi- 
ness for you now, and telephone for a sort of fire- 
escape nurse, who’ll know how to make those poor 
arms and faces and heads of yours comfy. Bless 
your heart, the Coggs twins aren’t such gumps as to 
be airy when there’s nothing for them to be airy about, 
but they’re tickled to death to think they can have such 
good times as they have and get in an extra one for 
some one else once in a while! Good-by; don’t 
worry ! We don’t mind, not now. Good-by — as I 
said before! Come and see us when you get well. 
Of course we’ll see you to-morrow, though.” 

Maizie hurried away before Lizzie could pour out 
the emotions which the twins saw were struggling 
upward in her. The other three girls fled with 
Maizie. 

“ It was bad enough to be hated and plotted against 
three years ago, when we didn’t know it, but it would 
be worse to be cried over and admired now,” Taizie 
said, when they had reached the safe refuge of “ the 
palace.” 


THE MILLS FIRE 


209 


They left to Mr. Dermot and Tommy the arrange- 
ments for transferring Lizzie to Mrs. Deacon’s. The 
room which they had retained there needed but a bed 
to be all that Lizzie required, more than she could 
have had but for the Coggs. 

This comforting fact nestled warm in the kind 
hearts of the Coggs twins as they drove silently home- 
ward, each of the gay girls pale and sad, lying back 
against the cushions, quite worn out by emotion. 

“To think how we started out only four hours ago 
with that rug for Nancy darling and what has hap- 
pened!” sighed Daisy, getting out of the car with 
elderly slowness, as if her heavy heart weighted her 
lively feet. 

“It’s been some day!” murmured Taizie, permit- 
ting herself to slip back into her abandoned slang, but 
looking so spent that Rhoda did not count it. 

“ I can’t bear to look at anything when I think that 
Doctor Porter can’t see,” sobbed Hazie, shutting her 
eyes and risking a fall by getting out of the car with 
them tight closed. 

Maizie, last to leave the car, paused on the step. 

“He shall see!” she cried fiercely. “He shall, if 
I have to pluck out my own eyes and give them to 
him!” 


CHAPTER XI 


THE COGGS THAT HELD 

HERE are many things in this life 
which we feel will be unbearable, 
yet with which we manage to exist. 
Perhaps it is less that we bear them 
than that, being unescapable, we en- 
dure being road mates with them through a forced 
march from which they have taken the sunshine. 

When Doctor Porter and his wife, with Nancy, re- 
turned from their visit to the Boston oculist, whose 
verdict on Doctor Porter’s eyes was the death knell 
to their hopes, the blow that had fallen seemed utterly 
past bearing. That this skilful and beloved physician, 
this lover of mankind and of books, should be doomed 
to lay down his work, his pursuits, and spend the re- 
mainder of his days in darkness and comparative 
inaction, was heartrending tragedy. Every one who 
loved him and depended upon him — and this was the 
majority of all who dwelt in the three Chagfords — 
shared to a degree in the grief which was keener to 
Mrs. Porter and to Nancy than to the doctor himself. 

But Mrs. Porter was too good a woman, Nancy was 
210 



THE COGGS THAT HELD 


211 


too high-souled a girl for them to give themselves up 
to mourning over the sorrow that had befallen them. 
Instead, they aroused to their task of cheering the 
doctor, and of devising ways of getting him to resume 
his work in life, without which he would never live, 
in any real sense. 

The grief of the double twins when they heard that 
the oculist had given no hope to their best friends 
was tropical. But, though Maizie had declared that 
Doctor Porter should not be blind though she had to 
pluck out her own eyes to give him, the twins’ passion- 
ate rebellion against the verdict was no more helpful 
than Mrs. Porter and Nancy’s quieter agony. It re- 
mained for the double twins but to co-operate in 
Nanc/s plots to interest and amuse her father. 

“ We’re not children; we’re not even the youngest 
young girls, as we used to be,” observed Daisy at the 
breakfast table the next morning. 

Maizie laughed. “Aren’t we?” she asked. 
“ Queer we don’t stand still ! Daise, is there any spe- 
cial thing the matter with your intellect this morning 
to make it strike off flashes like that? ” 

“ Don’t know,” said Daisy earnestly striving to lib- 
erate a bit of grapefruit that clung to its circular bowl 
of peeling. “ It’s working, though. What I mean is 
that we’re old enough to do something to make Doc- 
tor Porter happier, if we can’t help his eyes. I won- 
der if one of us could study medicine, and another 


212 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


trained nursing, and get him to teach us? That’s the 
best I could think of.” 

“ I’ve been thinking, too,” said Taizie, grave, while 
the other two twins and Rhoda laughed. “We don’t 
know enough to start to study a profession. Rhoda 
has taught us enough to be ornamental, but not useful. 
That isn’t blaming you, Rhoda-Reader ; that’s what 
we wanted to do — learn enough to shine like glow- 
worms, not electric lights. But you’ve got to have a 
solid foundation to build a profession on. Besides, 
it wouldn’t please Doctor Porter to have us do that; 
he’s not in love with women’s doing everything. He 
told me once he hated to see a man embroidering, or 
a woman amputating limbs. I saw Rick Lovering last 
night. He’s perfectly heartbroken over — over the 
dear doctor.” Taizie’s voice quivered. “ But he’s 
heartbroken the right way. He’s full of plans to be 
the best son to him a man ever had. Girls, Rick’s the 
best boy on earth, as well as the handsomest! He 
thinks he’ll study medicine and work right in with the 
doctor, so there won’t be any break in the chain, and 
it will keep up Doctor Porter’s courage and interest 
to help Rick start.” 

“Fine!” cried Rhoda. “Twins, don’t you think 
that some day Rick will be the doctor’s son ? ” 

“Certain sure he will!” cried Taizie, “but Nancy 
is not thinking of romance. She’s a little girl at heart, 
in spite of being sixteen. She’ll have enough to think 




THE GOGGS THAT HELD 


213 


of, now, to drive everything else out of her head. The 
only plan I could hit on for us to work out to help 
that blessed man through these first awful days is for 
one of us to get into a bad scrape which he could set 
right, something to interest him. And I’m the one 
best fitted out to get into it.” 

“ Taizie, you are the most ridiculous one of the 
four! ” cried Maizie. 

“ ’Course ! That’s why I picked myself out to come 
to grief,” Taizie interrupted her before she could say 
more. 

“ What kind of a scrape had you selected? Because 
that is important,” said Rhoda leaning back in her 
chair to laugh at Taizie, with half-shut eyes, as Rhoda 
always laughed. 

“ Oh, just a nice scrape, not dangerous, not the kind 
Doctor Porter would not approve — perhaps break a 
bone, or get hurt somehow — I don’t know,” said 
Taizie considering possibilities as she spoke. 

“ Well, of all the crazy — What good do you sup- 
pose that would do the doctor?” demanded Hazie, 
regarding her twin with amazement, accustomed as 
she was to Taizie’s eccentricities. 

“ Sort of start him to practising, when he thinks 
he never can again and give him something to think 
about. I don’t know what I mean, but I mean it! 
The doctor likes us girls a good deal — Oh, I mean it 
would sort of give him a jolt, and then he’d run on. 


214 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Rick said the greatest fear Mrs. Porter and Nancy 
felt was that they could not arouse him to begin. I 
had an idea if something bad happened to one of us 
it would make him fly to help us and if — well, if the 
doctor got started on these Coggs they might be cogs 
that would hold.” Taizie found it difficult to express 
her thoughts, but they were entirely clear and con- 
vincing to her. 

“ I think I should not seek out scrapes, Taizie dear, 
even for so loving an object; they come fast enough,” 
suggested Rhoda gently. “ Doctor Porter will be use- 
ful and happy whether his sight is all insight, or 
partly outsight, as dear little Grandma Emerson would 
say.” 

“ Are you going with us to see Lizzie Horn, Tai- 
zie ? ” asked Maizie. “ Please don’t hunt for scrapes ! 
Such a ridiculous idea! One might think you were 
seven instead of seventeen ! ” 

“ Only very nice people grow up childish,” retorted 
Taizie. “ Surest thing you know Pm going down to 
see Lizzie Horn! You better believe I won’t let you 
get all the reward of returning good for evil. When 
the Coggs heap coals of fire on any one’s head, little 
Taizie’s going to be there with one of the shovels.” 

“ I wonder why it’s good and noble to heap coals 
of fire on heads,” remarked Hazie thoughtfully. “ I 
don’t know anything I wouldn’t rather a person would 
do to me; sounds fearful, hot coals right on top of 


THE COGGS THAT HELD 215 

your head where mine’s kind of sensitive to comb 
hard.” 

“ Ours are too near red already to need coals of 
fire,” said Taizie, who was more than likely to make 
a concluding comment. 

They found Lizzie Horn comfortable, considering 
the severity of her burns, when the twins arrived at 
Mrs. Deacon’s. After the first awkwardness of meet- 
ing had been surmounted Lizzie showed that she was 
glad to see the Coggs girls. She showed also a tend- 
ency to treat them as her Noble Benefactors, with 
capital letters, but the double twins would not allow 
it. 

“ Cut it out, Lizzie, cut all that out,” ordered 
Maizie decidedly. “ We aren’t doing a thing. It 
doesn’t matter to us whether you’re getting well in 
this room, or whether some one is reading in it; we 
keep it anyway. But if that weren’t so, we wouldn’t 
let any one look at us like stained glass windows, with 
figures of guardian angels in ’em. We don’t like brass 
bands playing when we go by, nor insects — incense, 
I mean — waved at us.” 

“If you had such a poor, crowded home as I have 
and some one put you into a nice room when you were 
burned, ’specially some one you’d been mean about, I 
guess you’d feel — ” 

“ Lizzie, cut — it — out ! ” interrupted Taizie with 
utmost emphasis. “ For goodness’ sake, be sensible ! 


216 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


What’s wrong with Mrs. Deacon? She looks terribly 
downcast.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Lizzie. “ She’s moping 
around like this all the time. I was afraid she didn’t 
want me here.” 

“ You haven’t anything to do with it,” Daisy de- 
cided promptly. “ She’s the kindest soul, loves to do 
for people. Besides, we said when we kept the room 
we might want to put some sick person in here, if the 
hospital wasn’t ready. We’ve got to coax the deacon- 
ess to tell us her sorrows, twin team.” 

“ All right, divide forces. Hazie and you stay with 
Lizzie, while Taizie and I get around the deaconess,” 
said Maizie, going toward the door. 

They found Mrs.' Deacon, whom they had chris- 
tened affectionately “ the deaconess,” in the kitchen 
making apple dumplings. The corners of her lips 
drooped and duller eyes than the four young ones 
scrutinizing her would have seen that tears had lately 
fallen from her patient eyes, with their fellows hov- 
ering close to her heavy lids. 

“ Good morning, Mrs. Deacon,” Maizie said, drop- 
ping into the chair at the end of the table, while Taizie 
took the rocker by the window. 

They were conscious that, as far as she could dis- 
tinguish between the four Coggs girls, they were Mrs. 
Deacon’s favorites, to whom she was most likely to 
confide her worries. 


THE COGGS THAT HELD 


217 


“ You look like dumps instead of dumplings, Mrs. 
Deacon, dear,” Maizie went on, with a little laugh. 
“ Nothing wrong, is there? ” 

Mrs. Deacon shook her head, sighing. “ Nothing 
you can help, Maizie,” she said. 

“ There’s nothing Maizie and I together can’t help, 
Mrs. Deacon,” Taizie joined in the persuasion. 
“ Maizie alone, or I alone, might be no good, but 
together — my! We can make mountains out of 
molehills and then remove the mountains.” 

“ I can usually laugh when you talk nonsense, 
Taizie,” said Mrs. Deacon. “ But not to-day. My 
heart is heavier than I hope my dumplings will be, 
though I’m certain my crust isn’t what it ought to be 
and usually is.” 

“ Now that settles it! ” Maizie cried. “ Tell us this 
minute what’s up — down, I guess is nearer right.” 

“ My dear, my dear, it surely is ! ” cried Mrs. Dea- 
con, turning aside to protect her dumplings from her 
rising tears. “ It’s Tommy Giddings.” 

“ Tommy Giddings! ” cried Maizie. 

Taizie sat erect with a sudden contraction of terror 
around her heart. She was surprised to find herself 
horrified at a hint of harm, of wrong to, or in 
Tommy. 

“ Never tell me Tommy is worrying you, turning 
out bad ! ” Maizie implored. 

“ Not he ! ” Mrs. Deacon affirmed proudly, and 


218 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

Taizie sank back, relieved; nothing Mrs. Deacon 
could have to tell would be as bad as that. 

“ I may as well tell you the story,” Mrs. Deacon 
said, pinching the dough around the edges where she 
had folded it over an apple. “ Just let me get these 
dumplings into the pan and set it in the oven and I’ll 
talk to you. If I get to going over the awful story 
I won’t be answerable for what I’ll do with my baking. 
There ! ” she added, after a busy three minutes of 
carrying out her programme. She dusted her hands 
and drew another straight chair to the table, facing 
Maizie, sideways to Taizie. 

“ Dear twins,” she said impressively. “ It’s the 
stock.” 

“ We don’t know what that means,” said Taizie as 
she and Maizie looked from one to the other for en- 
lightenment. 

“ Stock,” repeated Mrs. Deacon. “ Stock I bought 
and lots of us around here took at the same time. I 
bought it to start Tommy Giddings in life. I haven’t 
a chick nor a child of my own, so I saved and saved 
to do for my widowed sister’s boy. Tommy wants 
to go into business ; he’s got a real good chance, going 
to be ready for him in about three months. First 
along that stock paid splendid, seven and a half per 
cent, and sometimes eight. Then it got jumpy; now 
it doesn’t pay at all and so no one can sell it. And 
we’ve all lost our savings, all we’ve worked and 


THE COGGS THAT HELD 


219 


scraped so hard for, and Tommy can't start in busi- 
ness. And there’s Lora Bruce, too ; her mother 
bought that stock and maybe they’ll lose their home, 
because it’s mortgaged and ’tain’t likely they can meet 
the interest — oh, dear, oh, dear ! ” 

Maizie and Taizie listened with pity, but with be- 
wilderment. They understood never having anything 
and they understood having a great deal; they did 
not understand about having a little and that little 
failing in payments, getting swept away. After an 
instant the story did not strike them as being as bad 
as it was. 

“ I should think that might be fixed up,” suggested 
Taizie, looking at Maizie. 

Mrs. Deacon took instant alarm. “ Don’t you try 
to do anything about it!” she cried. “ Now, girls, 
don’t ! There isn’t a thing you can do, except by way 
of charity, and if Tommy thought I’d got you started 
to help us out, or help me out, so’s’t I could help him, 
why, I honestly believe I’d be afraid of him, he’d hate 
it so ! All you can do is to be sorry for us, and that 
comforts me.” 

“ What makes Tommy so down on us? ” demanded 
Taizie. “ Why would he be so furious if we 
showed we were friends? He pretends to be our 
friend.” 

“ Land sakes, Taizie, you’ve got the wrong idea ! ” 
cried Mrs. Deacon. “ I’ve been wondering if you 


220 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


ever did see what a lot Tommy Giddings thinks of 
you, of all four of you, but mostly of Taizie. If he 
was down on you, as you say, he’d be better satisfied 
to let you help him. Tommy’s past eighteen. When 
a boy thinks there’s one girl in the world topping by 
at least a full head every other girl in the world he 
don’t want her to be doing charity work to start him 
in business. I guess, maybe, it’s because he is any- 
thing but ‘ down on you ’ that Tommy’s in such a 
hurry to get ahead.” 

The bright color that flooded Taizie’s face stopped 
whatever Maizie was about to say on the threshold of 
her lips. She stared at Taizie blankly for a moment, 
for the first time realizing that romance might come 
to one of the contented quartette, separating her, in 
a sense, from the others. 

Following this shock came wisdom, a sort of un- 
selfish cunning. If Tommy Giddings liked Taizie a 
great deal, and if Taizie liked that liking, then it was 
for her, Maizie, as the twin who had always been 
given the leadership in twinly matters, to further his 
fortunes, if she could find a way to do so. 

Maizie arose. “ There isn’t anything to say, Mrs. 
Deacon,” she said. “ It seems too silly for anything 
to say you’re sorry — same thing you say when you 
run into any one in the street, or step on their foot! 
I’m dreadfully sorry! But maybe it won’t be so bad, 
maybe it will come out. I’ve heard of things — stocks 


THE COGGS THAT HELD 


221 


and banks and such things — being horrid a while and 
getting over it. Perhaps this will come around. 
Don’t stocks get bought up when they’re down some- 
times, by people who know that they’ll be all right 
some day? Maybe some one will buy yours and wait 
to make a lot out of it! At any rate, don’t feel too 
dreadfully. I smell your dumpling rising in the oven 
like everything! Make your dumps rise too! As to 
Tommy, he’s so bright and so nice that he’s sure to 
get on. But I’m just as sorry as if I wasn’t saying 
foolish, cheerful things.” 

“ I know you, Maizie; you’re always sorry when 
anybody else is! True as I’m alive, I’m almost sorrier 
about those poor Bruces than I am about us ! ” said 
good Mrs. Deacon, patting Maizie’s shoulder when 
another woman would have kissed her. 

“ Yes, indeed!” cried Taizie. “Mrs. Bruce looks 
as though she’d stood all she could, and Lora is such 
a splendid girl! It’s no wonder all the girls call her 
Trusty. Do you think they really will lose their 
home?” 

“ I think it’s more’n likely,” sighed Mrs. Deacon. 
“ Why on earth do such good folks have such fearful 
trouble?” 

“ It would take more than a deacon to answer 
that,” said Maizie with a laugh. “ I’m going to be- 
lieve they’ll have good luck because they are good — 
our deaconess will, too! Good-by. We’ll stop an- 


222 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

other minute with Lizzie and then run away. Don’t 
worry — but I’m sorry! What was the name of the 
stock, did you say?” 

“ I didn’t say. It was the Winner Copper mine 
and my shares would have been worth two thousand 
dollars — if they had been ! ” said Mrs. Deacon, off 
guard, and saying what she had not meant to say. 

“ Shame ! ” Maizie cried. “ Good-by. Perhaps the 
business would not have been good for Tommy if he 
had gone into it; you never can tell.” 

She hurried off, but Taizie delayed to kiss Mrs. 
Deacon with a gentleness that few had ever seen in 
harum-scarum Taizie. 

“ It’s tough ! ” she said, and her condensed, inele- 
gant sympathy conveyed to Mrs. Deacon the convic- 
tion that it was deep. 

The four twins left Lizzie greatly cheered by their 
visit and with an enthusiasm for them burning high 
within her. 

“ Such funny things as they are, but so kind, so 
big-hearted ! My, they’re great ! ” Lizzie said fer- 
vently to Mrs. Deacon when that saddened woman 
brought her a dumpling which was not forbidden by 
suffering from burns. 

In the car Maizie and Taizie poured rapidly out to 
the other two the story they had heard. 

“ ’Course it’s awful,” Daisy agreed with her twin’s 
concluding question. “ But what do we do about it? 


THE COGGS THAT HELD 223 

We all know we aren’t going to stop at saying it’s 
awful and we’re sorry.” 

“ Not much,” Maizie approved her. “ Taizie and 
I couldn’t say anything there. I was thinking while 
we were talking to Lizzie. Let’s telegraph a letter to 
Mr. Carberry. Reason it has to be telegraphed is to 
hurry it up; if it takes long Mrs. Deacon will know 
we did something and we’ll be left. We’ll tell Mr. 
Carberry to buy that Winner mine stuff and get some 
man whose name no one heard to wire Mrs, Deacon 
asking if she’ll sell — I don’t know how to say it, but 
Mr. Carberry will! Let the faked buyer offer her 
enough to put back the two thousand she thought 
she’d have. Then buy it; I got ahead of my story; 
he’ll ask first and buy next. Then he’ll send her the 
money, our money, don’t you see? And her little 
Tommy nephew can go into business if he wants to! ” 

“ Wouldn’t he be ripping! ” chuckled Taizie, giving 
the wheel a swift turn that sent the car too far to one 
side of the road. Taizie had attained her desire, and 
ran the big car herself, apparently to its and her own 
satisfaction. 

“If he found out, he’d make his aunt give the 
money back, and it’s likely they will suspect,” said 
Hazie. 

“ Suspecting isn’t proving,” said Maizie. “ He can 
straighten up with us some day, if ever he gets rich.” 

“ What about the Bruces ? Aren’t we going to do 


224 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


anything for Lora? All deaconess and Tommy?” 
inquired Daisy. 

“ Hardly!” said Maizie. “We’ll simply pay their 
mortgage and tear it up — can’t be much ; house is 
too little.” 

“ See here, Maize, we’re all with you, shoulder to 
shoulder, but — can we ? Have we enough money ? 
If only we hadn’t spent so much! Shall we dare — 
and pay our own bills ? ” Daisy looked worried as 
she asked. 

“ Well, it’s a new quarter, begins Wednesday. 
We’ll have to scrimp for three months. Imagine us, 
the Coggs twins, scrimping on that money ! But we’ve 
got to pay wages and things — we’ll do it ! We won’t 
care if we cut out some gorgeous things we’d like to 
do; we don’t have to have any candy this quarter. 
Oh, we’ll make it! If we don’t, we’ll borrow from 
Doctor Porter! We wanted to interest him anyway; 
that ought to do it ! ” Maizie laughed. 

“ Yes, and the first thing they’d all think was what 
a lot that rug for Nancy cost! No, sir; we’ll sell our 
family jewels, if we get broke — run short!” said 
Taizie. 

“ Well,” Hazie gave a soft little chuckle which was 
her form of the Coggs’ gay laugh, “ if we sold our 
family jewels I’m afraid we’d give away our family! ” 

What Mr. Carberry said when he received the night 
letter telegram in which the double twins, aided by 


THE COGGS THAT HELD 


225 


Rhoda, stated their case and asked him to buy worth- 
less investments, there was no wireless connection to 
reveal. 

His telegraphed protest did not weaken the girls' 
resolution, and Mr. Carberry ended by carrying out 
their instructions. Having done his duty as their 
lawyer in warning them against their extravagant 
generosity, Mr. Carberry felt great secret satisfaction 
in it. 

“ I tell you, Celia, my dear, he said to Mrs. Car- 
berry, “ there are plenty of girls whom wealth will 
spoil, but there aren’t many whom it will improve. 
I’m downright proud of those little Coggs twins. 
Finding them out and setting them on their upward 
way was a good job done. I deserve well of my coun- 
try for putting power into four pairs of hands which 
are going to prove hands that will bless.” 

A few days later the double twins could not resist 
the temptation of seeing what change in Mrs. Deacon 
had been wrought by good fortune; the necessity of 
looking after Lizzie gave more than sufficient reason 
for going. They found Lora there, and Mrs. Deacon 
so changed from the melancholy of their previous 
visit that it was hard to keep from rejoicing with her 
before they were told that there was something to 
rejoice over, and, as Taizie said afterward, “that 
would have been a give away ! ” 

They had not long to wait. Lora pounced on them 


226 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

and Mrs. Deacon began to talk at one and the same 
moment. 

“ The strangest thing has happened — if it isn’t 
you ! ” cried Mrs. Deacon. 

“ Did you think we wouldn’t know you were at the 
bottom of it, twins, even if our stocks were bought in 
New York?” cried Lora. 

“ What are you talking about?” asked Daisy, with 
a well-feigned air of perplexity. 

“ Humbug! ” said Lora. “ Tommy and I know it’s 
you. The question is : what are we going to do about 
it? It’s just the same as if you gave us the money.” 

“ Tommy says he won’t ever let you girls give me 
money to set him up in business — ’specially Taizie,” 
said Mrs. Deacon. “ And nothing on this earth will 
make him believe you didn’t do it, after I told him 
how I’d let you know about the trouble I was in. But 
sometimes I think — and then again I don’t ! It could 
be so that somebody knew the stocks would improve, 
after a while, and bought ’em up. It happened so 
quick, in New York; I don’t see how you got at it so 
soon after I told you about it. It’s so good it don’t 
seem’s if it could be so, but Tommy says no young 
man would want a girl, or four girls, should start him 
going. Tommy’s funny. Won’t you tell us the truth, 
Maizie? ” 

“Am I generally untruthful?” Maizie demanded, 
to gain time. 


THE COGGS THAT HELD 


227 


“ Tommy! ” Taizie took up the theme scornfully. 
“‘No young man!’ You tell Tommy Giddings to 
wait till he grows up before he calls himself pet names 
like that! Tommy’s a mere boy, the merest boy I 
know of his age. If I wanted to set a young man up 
in business I’d dodge snips of boys, so he needn’t 
worry about the twins — ‘’specially Taizie!’” 

This contempt for Tommy did not delude any one, 
except Mrs. Deacon, whom it troubled. But Lora was 
not to be diverted from her point as Mrs. Deacon 
could be by an attack on her Tommy, as Taizie well 
knew. 

“No good, girls!” said Lora. “We know you 
managed somehow to save us; Mrs. Deacon thinks 
it may be some one else worked the miracle, but 
Tommy and I know. And there’s no use trying to 
refuse your kindness, because it’s all settled. I’m sure 
I don’t know what would have become of mother, if 
you hadn’t saved her. I don’t mind it as Tommy 
does. He has a young man’s pride — in spite of 
Taizie ! — and because of Taizie, as she knows quite 
well! Mother and I are only so glad, so grateful! 
We hope, if we wait and try, maybe we can prove it! ” 

“ Oh, for goodness’ sake, Lora, don’t talk about 
being grateful! It sounds so horrid,” cried Maizie. 

“As if we were pinning pie plates behind our ears 
for halos when we’d never get real ones!” added 
Taizie, the absurd. 


228 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“If you thought we did it, you could hand us your 
mortgage for security,” suggested Daisy with what 
she intended for a hard, business-like manner. 

“ So you wouldn't let us pay interest! ” cried Lora, 
sharp and suspicious of these girls. “ No, sir, m’am, 
Daisy Coggs! We're going to use your money, that 
you paid for good-for-nothing stocks, to pay off that 
mortgage; we won’t let you hold it without interest, 
while we use the money in other ways. I can see 
through you ! ” 

“Stuff!” cried Daisy. “We’ve been thinking of 
investing in first mortgages.” 

She looked as much like a business woman as her 
frowzy red hair and sunny young face allowed her 
to, frowning to convey her keenness in these matters. 

“ Well, you haven’t owned up you did it, but if you 
did, you saved poor little Mrs. Bruce and Lora, as 
well as me and Tommy, though he don’t like it, and 
I’m just as sure you’ll get blessed, in more ways than 
we could repay you, as I am that the Lord has a good 
memory and power to reward,” said Mrs. Deacon, 
with tearful happiness and so much earnestness that 
she trembled. 

“ Goodness, Mrs. Deacon, we’ve got all and more 
than we want and heaps more’n we deserve,” said 
Hazie. “ Let’s go in to see Lizzie, girls. I think it’s 
awful, the way we’re getting sentenced before we’ve 
been proved guilty.” 


THE COGGS THAT HELD 


229 


“ If we ever did anything decent and we’re going 
to get paid for it, I wish the pay would be that Doctor 
Porter would be cured,” said Taizie, turning back 
from the doorway, as the four Goggs girls stampeded 
from further discussion of their kindness. 


CHAPTER XII 


taizie’s excessive success 

’D like to walk home, ,, announced 
Taizie when the double twins, their 
visit to Lizzie over, came out of 
Mrs. Deacon’s house to their wait- 
ing car. 

“ I’ll go with you,” said Hazie and 

Daisy together. 

“ You can’t walk, Daisy; you have to go to the 
dressmaker’s and you’re late,” Maizie reminded her 
twin. “ Why walk, Taizie?” 

“ I guess the only answer is: Why not?” Taizie 
laughed. “ Just feel like it, that’s all. Since we’ve 
been wealthy and automobilious my muscles are get- 
ting flabby. I’ll get so I can’t walk much better than 
a caterpillar stood up straight. So I’m going to walk 
home.” 

“Well, you are silly! Good-by,” said Hazie, get- 
ting into the car. 

Taizie waved her hand to the other three-quarters 
of herself as the car rolled away. She set out at a 
230 



TAIZIE’S EXCESSIVE SUCCESS 231 


cheerful pace along the street, enjoying the prospect 
of a long walk in the sun-warmed, frost-cooled air 
of late autumn. 

The distance was considerable from Chagford Falls 
to the lake section of old Chagford, but there was a 
short cut through a rough road, made in the days when 
woodsmen were cutting down the trees which once 
stood in solid phalanxes between the lake and the 
town. The road survived its original use, but over- 
grown with a third growth of saplings, the feeble de- 
scendants of the stately trees which had once stood 
there; it was rocky, and rough with stumps, and was 
used but as a short cut, or else as a pleasure ground 
by those who cared more for the hidden treasures of 
secluded nooks than for foot comfort. 

Taizie, deciding that she had undertaken a good 
deal in the long walk by the highways to the palace, 
turned into this abandoned road to shorten the dis- 
tance. 

It was a lonely walk, the chance of meeting any 
one on it was slender, and the Chagford girls never 
went through the woods road except in bands of sev- 
eral girls together. None of the Coggs girls knew 
enough of what fear was like to be ordinarily prudent, 
so Taizie took this road blithely, whistling as she 
walked, not to keep her courage up, for she was not 
conscious of needing courage, but with the blackbird’s 
enjoyment of her own notes. 


232 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


About midway in the road she thought that she 
heard a sound and two or three chickadees flew up 
from some shrubs ahead of her. Then branches 
snapped and leaves rustled and there came before her 
startled, but not frightened eyes, a man. 

He was young, roughly dressed, rough-featured, 
with a loose hanging mouth and a nose as much too 
long for his face as his hands were too small for his 
body and his fingers too pointed for their unkempt 
condition. 

The young man covered the few paces which sepa- 
rated him from Taizie and halted close to her, directly 
in her path. 

“ Don’t be scared,” he said. 

Taizie laughed, but the warning reversed its effect; 
with the suggestion that she might have been afraid 
there crept into her heart the first, faint chill of fear. 

“ What of ? ” she inquired carelessly. 

“ You’re game all right,” the young man compli- 
mented her, plainly admiring her for being so. “ It 
wouldn’t be anything extraordinary if you was some 
scared. I guess you wasn’t lookin’ for me, was 
you?” 

“ No, I can’t say that I was,” Taizie admitted. “ I 
might have been more scared, if I had known you 
were coming out, like a jack in the box. Are you 
some one I know? I don’t remember you. Do you 
work in the mills?” 



“ halted close to her, directly in her path 
















TAIZIE’S EXCESSIVE SUCCESS 233 


“ No, I don’t; I don’t work much of anywheres. 
I’m a lily by profession,” said the young man with 
a grin. 

“A lily?” Taizie repeated, puzzled, thinking the 
word must be the nickname of a trade, or else be the 
title of some trade of which she had never heard. 

“ Do you mean a water-lily? Is that a way of say- 
ing you’re a plumber ? ” she asked, rapidly working 
out possible clues in her mind. 

The man’s grin broadened and broke into a laugh. 
“ Say, you’re sure game and you’re funny. Plumber ! 
Not much. A lily of the field, don’t work at all — 
see?” 

“ Oh, yes, I do see,” Taizie said. “ Just a loafer. 
Well, that wouldn’t suit me as a profession. Why 
don’t you dig yourself up by the roots, if you’re a 
loafer-lily, and then dig other things? I must go on, 
Mr. Lily; I’m in a hurry.” 

The young man scowled. “ I wasn’t hunting for 
advice,” he growled. “ I guess you better not hurry 
home; it’s too late for a girl like you to go home 
alone. Ain’t you Miss Coggs ? ” 

“ Yes. One of her,” Taizie gave a tiny nervous 
laugh, for she was beginning to feel afraid. “ Let me 
pass, please. The path isn’t wide enough here for 
two.” 

“ That’s why I held you up just here,” the man was 
kind enough to explain. “ You’re not goin’ home 


234 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


right off, Miss Coggs. You’re goin’ along with me, 
because it wouldn’t be the least bit of use tryin’ to git 
away by hollerin’ or fightin’; you’re a pris’ner, my 
pris’ner, if I do say it myself.” 

Taizie’s heart gave a great leap, a suffocating throb, 
then seemed to stand still. Her quick wits told her 
to keep up the appearance of courage, which at first 
she had felt, but which died within her as she realized 
that she was alone in the woods road with an exceed- 
ingly unattractive looking person. She tried to say 
something to gain time in which to discover some- 
thing that she could do, and her brave struggle to 
make her voice steady was wonderfully successful. 

“ Talk about being funny,” she said, “ I’d never 
have thought of anything to say as funny as that! 
And, as to saying it yourself, it seems to me when 
you’re making ,such a good joke as telling me I’m 
your prisoner, you needn’t care if you’re not modest 
about it. I’m fond of a joke, really, but I haven’t 
time to enjoy one now. Please let me pass.” 

The young man shook his head slowly, almost re- 
gretfully. 

“ You can’t pass, Miss Coggs, and the least said 
soonest mended, as the sayin’ is,” he said. “ You’re 
a pris’ner, and you’re goin’ along with me, turnin’ 
in about where I jumped out o’ the woods, an’ from 
there we’re goin’ — well — further. There wouldn’t 
be any use hollerin’, ’cause, while I don’t mean to hurt 


TAIZIE’S EXCESSIVE SUCCESS 235 


you, I’d have to stop it by a gag. And if you didn’t 
come along real nice and easy, I’d have to tie you and 
take you.” He ended with an expressive motion sug- 
gesting hauling a heavy body by main force and a 
tight grip. Taizie looked at him steadily, pale, with 
a gleam of both terror and anger in her eyes as she 
realized that the adventure was serious and that she 
might be in actual danger of kidnapping at the hands 
of this strange individual, whose lightly humorous 
manner in the beginning seemed peculiarly sinister 
when it was apparent that it covered a relentless inten- 
tion to be cruel. 

“ I wonder what would be the use of taking me 
prisoner,” said Taizie. “ If you mean it.” 

“ Do I look as if I didn’t mean it ? ” demanded the 
young man. And silently, in her thoughts, Taizie 
replied that he did not look insincere in the matter. 

“What use? Well, now! Isn’t there any money to 
buy me off ? I wonder ! I haul you off and hide you 
safe. Then I send word to your folks I’ll send you 
back if I find so many thousand dollars — a big wad! 
— hid in a place I’ll pick out. I got up the plan my- 
self, ain’t it good?” The brigand regarded Taizie 
with his first friendliness, as if he expected her to 
applaud her own capture. 

“ It’s the way they all do it, or try to,” said Taizie 
scornfully. “ The best thing you can do is to drop it. 
You’ll be sorry if you try that game. Let me go 


236 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


home, peacefully and don’t follow me, and I’ll see you 
get a good reward — though, well, never mind ! I’ll 
see you get it.” 

“ Ten thousand dollars? ” asked the brigand, whose 
inclination to reveal his cleverness and be admired 
for it made Taizie feel for the moment, as she had 
felt at first, that this was not a genuine kidnapping. 

“ No, of course not so much ; not for merely let- 
ting me go home as I’ve a right to go ! ” she cried 
imprudently. 

“ That’s what I thought! But I’ll get no less if 
I take you off, for that’s my price, and if it ain’t paid 
I’ll keep you. No more talkin’ now, young lady. 
Come along, and come quiet. I ain’t foolin’ you’ll 
find.” 

The young man put his hand on Taizie’s arm, not 
too gently, and she saw that her best course was to 
yield. 

She shook off his hand and her eyes blazed. “ I 
wish I was a man for a minute,” she cried, trembling 
with fear, yet furiously longing to be able to fight. 
“ Don’t you touch me! I’ll follow you, since I must. 
Go on ! ” 

“ You go first,” said the brigand. “ Ladies first 
always, ain’t it? I’m goin’ to keep you in front of 
me where I can watch you. ’Course you wouldn’t 
sneak, bein’ such a nice girl, but I’ll watch you all the 
samee. Go on, Miss Coggs, and don’t feel lonely. 


TAIZIE’S EXCESSIVE SUCCESS 237 

I’ll keep right behind you like a lock step, so nothing 
can happen you.” 

“ You’ll march lock step fast enough some day,” 
muttered Taizie between her set teeth. 

Her captor grinned, not hearing what she said, but 
plainly enjoying her spirit. He complimented her 
upon it as she walked, head up and unfaltering, into 
the murky path which he bade her take. 

“ Some fun takin’ a girl like you captive,” he said 
cordially. “ Most of ’em ’d cry, and lots of ’em ’d 
faint, and give me bother haulin’ ’em along, when they 
couldn’t walk. You’re too mad to give in and that’s 
the way to be. You’re tryin’ to hatch a plot to get 
off, but that’s wastin’ time; it’s no use. I’ve got the 
thing planned to z. What you want to do is to be 
thinkin’ what you’ll say in the letter I send your folks 
to make ’em come down handsome, so I’ll send you 
back quick’s possible.” 

Taizie did not reply. It was true that her brain was 
rapidly weaving plots for her own rescue, or escape, 
and as rapidly rejecting them as hopeless. Horror 
was creeping over her and deadly terror as each step 
among the bare trees bordering the by-path made the 
coming darkness more noticeable and impressed upon 
the poor girl the awful fact that she was alone, no one 
knew where, with this man who jested, yet was in 
deadly earnest and who might prove capable of any 


crime. 


238 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


When abductors found their victims in their way 
Taizie was sure that they killed them and concealed 
their dead bodies for chance to reveal. She shud- 
dered to think what might befall her before another 
sun should rise. The only wisdom lay in being as 
little trouble as possible and to hope against hope that 
she might be rescued by some happy chance. 

Her captor saw her shudder and noted that she im- 
mediately threw her head up higher and squared her 
shoulders. 

“ I like pluck,” he said. “If you go on like you * 
do I'll be swanged if I don’t wait a bit before writin’ 
for that ransom money, just to see pure grit workin’ 
overtime ! It’s a sight, and that’s no lie for me ! ” 
Taizie felt for an instant as though she lost con- 
sciousness as she heard this. If she made her capture 
too difficult she feared that this man might do away 
with her, to be rid of her. If she were brave, he might 
hold her longer to watch “ pure grit working ! ” 

In spite of herself Taizie uttered a sharp cry of 
agony. 

“ How can you ? ” she said. “ How can any one 
want money bad enough to torture a girl ? ” 

The man scowled at Taizie’s back and it was lucky 
that she could not see the expression that settled upon 
his face ; cruelty and greed made him look like a wolf. 

“ I’d do mor’n give a girl a tough week and scare 
her well for some money,” he said. 


TAIZIE’S EXCESSIVE SUCCESS 239 


After this nothing more was said until he had 
brought Taizie to a small hut, which had once been 
a wood cutter’s lodge, but which was dropping to 
pieces from the invasion of weather. 

“ Now we’ve got to hurry up,” announced Taizie’s 
captor. 

“ I’m in no hurry,” said Taizie, dropping exhaust- 
edly on a board that lay on the earth floor of the hut 
and digging her heels hard into the ground in a circle 
till it looked as though there had been a struggle there. 
Her quick wits told her that it could not be long till 
she was sought and she meant to try hard to leave 
behind her some trace of her passing. 

“ I am,” said the man decidedly. “ We’ve got to 
get off before your folks miss you. Here’s some 
things you’re to put on instead of your hat and coat. 
You’ll tie this here thick veil around your head, too, 
so if we should see any one they won’t know you. Put 
on these clothes.” 

Taizie took the shabby coat and hat held out to her 
and lifted them gingerly. 

“ Germs ! ” she observed. “ I don’t like second- 
hand clothing.” 

At the same time she rapidly considered how to 
leave behind her something she had worn, foreseeing 
that her captor would keep sharp watch of her and 
undoubtedly take from her everything she discarded 
as fast as she exchanged garments. 


240 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

“ They’re big,” said the singular brigand. “ I 
looked out for that. Just put ’em on over your own.” 

“ I can put the coat on over my gown, but not over 
my own coat. I couldn’t move if I did. And how can 
I wear two hats?” asked Taizie. 

As she spoke she took off her hat, but her captor 
foiled her intention to drop one of her two hat pins. 

“ I’ll trouble you for them till you want ’em for the 
next hat,” he said. “ No sowin’ seeds of trouble here, 
Miss Coggs ! ” 

“ You’re clever,” said Taizie giving him the hat 
pins. She shook with fear, yet managed to laugh. 

She fumbled at her hat, pretending that it had 
caught in her hair and doing so contrived to drop the 
silken crown lining which she wrenched out. It flut- 
tered to the ground, unnoticed by her enemy; its 
stamped label would tell her sisters that she had been 
here. A moment later she slid one of her shell hair- 
pins to the ground and set her foot on it. 

This time she laughed involuntarily as she took 
from her captor the repellent hat he offered her and 
the thick veil. 

“ I was thinking I didn’t know what to call you,” 
Taizie said hastily to explain the laugh. “ It’s funny 
to travel with a gentleman and not know his name.” 

“ You’re the coolest hand I ever seen!” cried the 
“ gentleman ” admiringly. “ I guess you can get 
along without my name, though.” 


TAIZIE’S EXCESSIVE SUCCESS 241 


“ I’ll call you Herod, because you torture the 
young,” said Taizie with cheerful frankness, wishing 
that she really were as cool as she seemed, yet thank- 
ful that she was able to seem so. 

“ Now come on ! ” said “ Herod ” after Taizie had 
tied up her head, taking as long as she dared for her 
costuming. 

He shoved her ahead of him out of the hut and poor 
Taizie staggered, pretending to be hardly able to 
walk. In truth she was newly horror-stricken as she 
left that miserable refuge to set out alone with her 
captor upon an unknown journey, full of all sorts of 
horrible possibilities. 

There was a clump of bushes just beyond the hut. 
Taizie threw herself into them with a cry. 

“ I can't go ! I can’t ! ” she screamed. 

“ Herod ” pulled her to her feet none too gently. 
“ You will ! ” he said fiercely. 

Taizie knew then that his singularly easy manner, 
his half joking ways were but adopted to troll her 
along with the least difficulty, that if she tried to re- 
sist him he would be violent to her. She therefore 
dragged herself onward submissively. She had done 
what she meant to do, though at the price of a 
scratched face. The bushes into which she had fallen 
were broken; who ever came here to seek her would 
see that it had been freshly done and in this get an- 
other clue to her fate. 


242 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ There’ll be a horse to take us along, by and by ,” 
“ Herod ” vouchsafed to her, and with this scant con- 
solation Taizie kept on. 

In the meantime the other three twins had gone 
homeward in the car, but had stopped at -the Porters’ 
on their way. 

They found Doctor Porter, sitting patient and pa- 
thetic in his darkness, as he always was found since 
the accident, with Nancy in a low chair beside 
him, reading to him and patting his arm with h£r 
left hand to compensate him for not seeing her 
face. 

“ Why did you let Taizie walk home alone, chil- 
dren ? ” asked the doctor, instantly alert on hearing 
that Taizie had chosen to walk. 

“ Why, doctor?” asked Maizie taking alarm from 
his manner. “ There’s no danger, is there ? ” 

“ Not if she keeps to the main roads,” said the doc- 
tor. “ But Taizie is not likely to do this; she will 
take the short cut, and it is not safe for a girl to go 
through that old woods road alone.” 

“ You speak as if you were frightened, Doctor 
Porter,” cried Daisy, instantly frightened also. 

Nancy dropped her book and sprang to her feet. 
Hazie began to cry. Fear leaped from one to another, 
set in motion by the doctor’s startled face, like an 
electric spark from a battery. 

“ I have heard only this morning of a man who was 


TAIZIE’S EXCESSIVE SUCCESS 243 


not a Chagfordian, hanging around those woods,” 
said the doctor. “ Nancy, go find Rick. I think we’d 
better send some one out that road to make sure that 
Taizie is all right. Mildred, please call up Rhoda 
Drummond and ask if Taizie has come home,” he 
added as Mrs. Porter came into the room, followed 
by Letty Hetty with a tray of hot chocolate, which 
nobody so much as saw. 

“ There’s Tommy Giddings going by! ” cried Mai- 
zie rushing to the door. 

She came back with Tommy, as Nancy entered by 
another door, with Rick in her wake. 

Rick’s handsome face was troubled, Tommy’s 
square jaw was set and he looked suddenly thin. 

“ You don’t imagine anything’s wrong with — her, 
do you? ” cried Tommy. 

The doctor shook his head. “ It isn’t wise to im- 
agine evil, so we won’t do it, but — I wish Taizie had 
stayed with the others. I’m troubled ; I’ll own 
that” 

Hazie began to sob hysterically. “ Oh, Taizie 
wanted to get into a scrape to interest Doctor Porter ; 
maybe she’s done it! Oh, Taizie! Maybe she’s done 
it, too well ! ” 

“ Oh, Hazie, wait till it’s all over before you wail ! ” 
cried Maizie. “ I hate people who make a fuss when 
there’s no reason to ! ” 

“ Rhoda says she isn’t there, but it takes a long 


244 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


time to reach the lake region, walking from Chagford 
Falls,” said Mrs. Porter, returning and trying to ad- 
minister the balm with the wound she gave. 

“ Come on, Tom,” said Rick. “ Quicker the 
better.” 

“ After her? ” said Tommy Giddings. 

“Where else?” demanded Rick. “Wish we had 
a revolver and a license to carry one.” 

“ I have,” said Tommy, pulling a revolver out of 
his pocket and displaying a badge on the inner side 
of his vest. “ Mr. Dermot got it for me in the mill. 
Pve been carrying funds for him lately. Out the 
woods road, do you say, doctor, starting from the 
Chagford Falls end?” 

“ No. There’s a path leads into that road from this 
end, across country into it. Rick knows it. I wish 
I could go with you, boys! You need more than you 
two striplings, if there should be trouble. Suppose 
there’s a gang, that the man who was seen there is not 
alone ! ” said the doctor. 

He began to pace the floor, aroused from his patient 
lethargy, as Taizie had foreseen he would be, if one 
of the double twins got into trouble. 

“ Oh, daddy dearest, time is so precious ! ” cried 
Nancy feverishly. “ Tommy and Rick are surely 
enough — with a revolver ! It would take longer to 
get others. You do know the path, don’t you, Richie? 
The one we used to take to find the pipsissewa? ” 


TAIZIE’S EXCESSIVE SUCCESS 245 

“ I know,” Rick nodded. “ There may not be any- 
thing wrong. Funny we’re all so sure there is! 
Ready, Tom? ” 

“ Ready! I’m eating myself to start,” cried 
Tommy, gnawing his cherished beginning of a mous- 
tache. 

The three Coggs girls were frantically pacing the 
floor. 

“ Take us ! We could help fight,” cried Daisy. 

“ No, we couldn’t,” Maizie said. “We’d go slow 
on account of these idiot skirts. Go on, do go on, 
boys ! ” 

“ Take our horn, Rick! ” cried Nancy, which prac- 
tical inspiration Letty Hetty expedited by rushing 
away to fetch the horn and giving it to Rick on the 
front piazza. 

Rick and Tommy disappeared down the street at a 
pace which satisfied even the fuming impatience of 
Taizie’s other selves. Doctor Porter put his hand 
heavily on Nancy’s shoulder. 

“ Sentenced to uselessness, my dawtie ! ” he mur- 
mured, permitting himself one of the few hints of 
repining which he had uttered since he had been 
stricken. 

Nancy laid a finger on his lips. “ We’re all leaning 
on you,” she said, with loving truth. 

Rick led the way into and down a hidden path 
which he and Nancy had loved when they were chil- 


246 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


dren, which they had haunted for the woodsy secrets, 
the lovely wild flowers which it held. 

The air was sharp, the flowers dead, the birds 
flown, but neither of the boys would have seen them 
had it been midsummer. 

They plunged along as fast as the overgrowth and 
stones would let them, emerging into the woods road 
which Taizie had traversed not two hours before. 

Tommy took the lead now, for the hut which he 
had in mind as a possible hiding-place of danger to 
Taizie, had been a favorite playground for him and 
his comrades of the Falls, while they were growing 
up. 

The hard road betrayed no footprints and Rick and 
Tommy pushed on, wondering whether this were a 
needless alarm, or whether harm had actually befallen 
Taizie. 

They entered the hut and together exclaimed. 
Their eyes instantly fell on the loosened ground of the 
floor which Taizie had dug up with her heels. 

Tommy fell on his knees with a groan, and arose 
with a white, set face, holding up Taizie’s hairpin for 
Rick to see. At the same moment Rick espied the 
hat lining and pounced upon it. 

The boys looked at each other a moment in speech- 
less horror. Then Rick said : 

“ She’s been here. She fought some one here. 
She’s kidnapped ! ” 


TAIZIE’S EXCESSIVE SUCCESS 247 


Tommy drew out his revolver. “ Come! ” he said, 
and no more. 

Outside the hut they noted the broken bushes and 
ground their teeth. Taizie’s clues were interpreted as 
she had meant them to be, and, except that there had 
been no struggle, because she had not resisted capture, 
they were interpreted aright. 

“ It can’t have been long ago,” said Rick. “ It isn’t 
dark yet.” 

“ It’s light enough for me to shoot any one who has 
harmed Taizie,” said Tommy Giddings. “ Hurry, 
before it gets too dark to see.” 

The boys broke into a run, pushing their way 
through the woods as fast, yet as noiselessly as pos- 
sible. 


CHAPTER XIII 


RESCUES 

ICK and Tommy rushed along 
through the woods, regardless of 
the roughness of the road. Occa- 
sionally they stumbled and plunged 
headlong over the stumps which the 
fallen leaves concealed. Their faces were scratched 
and bleeding, their hands torn, but nothing of this 
abated their speed. 

Do what he would, eager as he was to hasten, Rick 
could not keep up with Tommy Giddings. Tommy 
forged ahead as if he were a machine, incapable of 
shortness of breath. Rick was lithe and athletic, 
slender, quick in every motion, but Tommy surpassed 
him on this quest like a race-horse. 

Rick began to suspect, as he maintained his relative 
position to Tommy only by putting forth his utmost 
powers, that Tommy was running under the motor 
power of more than ordinary anxiety, that Taizie’s 
danger meant to him the danger of one for whom 
Tommy cared in no ordinary way. 

248 



RESCUES 


249 


“ Some one has passed,” said Tommy over his 
shoulder. Rapidly as he ran he noted another broken 
. shrub. It was not much broken, but, in passing it, 
Taizie had contrived to strike against its outer 
branches to leave a sign for those who should follow. 

“ Taizie! ” cried Rick triumphantly, as he paused to 
examine a footprint revealed by a piece of damp clay 
soil which interrupted the leaf mold of the road. 

The proof that Taizie had recently gone this same 
way acted like a stimulant to her rescuers; Rick and 
Tommy pressed on faster than before, covering the 
quarter miles at a record pace. 

“Look!” Tommy stopped so suddenly that Rick 
stumbled against him, then righted himself to stare 
ahead where Tommy pointed. 

They both saw a man not far in advance of them, 
pushing on fast, yet walking in such a way that they 
were sure some one was ahead of him. 

“ He’s marching Taizie! ” said Tommy. “ Taizie’s 
ahead. I’ll sprint and shoot him from the rear.” 

“ No, you won’t,” said Rick, cooler than Tommy. 
“ We’ll take him alive and you might shoot too well. 
Look, Tom, ’way through there. Isn’t that a horse 
tied? ” 

“ Sure,” said Tommy staring through the trees. 
“ Take him alive nothing! He’s more use dead. But 
I’ll guarantee not to kill him.” 

“ Sprint along that line of trees ; you can get 


250 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


through, and jump out ahead of him. I’ll keep up 
behind and we’ve got him. Have your revolver ready 
and, if he needs it, let him have its seasoning. But 
pop up in his path; more fun,” said Rick with sincere 
enjoyment of his own programme, yet also fearing 
that Tommy’s furious anger would lead him to aim 
better than he intended and that it might be bad for 
him to be known to have shot before defence of them- 
selves, or of Taizie, had made it necessary. 

“ Here goes, then,” said Tommy, throwing down 
his cap, drawing his revolver and darting, like a trout 
in a pool, under the limbs of the trees which, at this 
point, formed a narrow avenue of comparatively 
straight division between their ranks. 

Rick could see Tommy for only a moment after he 
had left him. Knowing that no impediments would 
delay him, now that he had come within sight of 
Taizie and her captor, Rick ran on as swiftly as he 
could and yet took care that no heedless footfall set 
a stone rolling, or cracked a branch to betray that 
rescue was on the track of the abductor. 

The last paces of his approach Rick had to take on 
a walk, creeping forward, for he was within hearing 
distance. He saw that a youthful woman’s figure 
preceded the man toward the waiting buggy, but he 
had never seen Taizie look like that. He wondered, 
as he crept stealthily onward, whether, after all, he 
and Tommy could have made a mistake. But Tommy 



COLLAR WITH A FIERCE TWIST 




























































% 








































* 

































RESCUES 251 

was coming upon them from the front; Tommy 
would know whether or not this were Taizie. 

Just as Rick began to wonder whether Tommy had 
missed his cue, Tommy dashed out from the trees, 
revolver extended. 

Rick heard Taizie scream, and recognized her voice 
as she dropped full length in the path. 

“ If you move you’re dead,” Rick heard Tommy 
say. “ And I wish you’d move ! ” 

Rick leaped forward. “ We’ve got you! ” he cried, 
catching the man by the collar with a fierce twist. 

“ Take it,” Tommy said thrusting his revolver into 
Rick’s hands, quickly, not to allow their enemy a 
moment’s advantage in the transfer. 

“ Get him to jail, Rick. I’ve got to see to Taizie. 
Walk close and keep your cannon trained every in- 
stant; don’t let him get away. If he tries it, shoot. 
Be a good thing if you could get an excuse to shoot! 
Take him away, quick! I’ll tear him to pieces, if I 
look at him.” 

“ As to tearing to pieces, boy, I’m some tearer my- 
self,” drawled the kidnapper. “ You’re not a heavy- 
weight at your age. But you’ve got the best of me 
with the gun. If I’d of known you was cornin’ I’d of 
had mine out, but I suppose you wouldn’t care about 
letting me draw it ? Ah ! thought not. I wasn’t ugly 
to Miss Coggs; you can ask her when she comes to. 
S’prised she fainted, but I suppose it’s ’cause she has 


252 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


been so blame plucky; kinder dropped when she saw 
she didn’t have to keep up. She’s the gamest ever! 
All I wanted was a handsome ransom, so to speak. I 
wasn’t mean to her. Sorry you’re so offended. 
Brothers of hers? Cousins — ” 

“ Rick, get out with him!” ordered Tommy, be- 
wildered, still raging angry, yet half tempted to laugh. 
Rick was shaking ; it was impossible for Rick to hear 
this calm, not to say kindly address without laughing. 
Rick’s sense of humor lay near the surface. 

“ Get along with you,” said Rick to his prisoner, 
accepting his office without disputing with Tommy 
for the privilege of looking after Taizie. “ Drive 
back with that horse, Tom. Sure you can get on all 
right? Taizie won’t stay in a faint, I guess. It was 
the shock of relief, as this gentleman implies. She’s 
moving. Sure it’s all right? Well, then, good luck 
to you. Drive fast; the girls will be crazed with anx- 
iety. Move on, you noble Roman ! The Sabine racket 
doesn’t always go. Remember, I’ve got the revolver 
right at the back of your head and, while I don’t feel 
bloodthirsty, I’ll shoot as quick as a wink if you try 
any tricks.” 

“ My boy, I haven’t a trick in my hand,” the brig- 
and assured Rick earnestly. “ My highest was a pair 
and I had to discard one of ’em.” 

“ I could find it in my heart to love you, you are 
such a gentle brigand, and humorous, withal,” ob- 


RESCUES 


253 


served Rick to his prisoner’s back. “ Pity you make 
it necessary for me to take such an unpleasant walk 
with you ! ” 

“ Gentle brigand ! Right you are, my boy. I’m 
more gentle than brigand; I’m a regular comic opera 
brigand, I am. But I need money, and I had a fine 
scheme for gettin’ it; you really hadn’t ought to of 
spoiled it, premature, so to speak. When I can get 
what I want bein’ nice about it, I am nice. It’s wearin’ 
on the constitution to get riled up. But I don’t deny 
when I have to be firm, firm’s my lay. I wouldn’t 
say, if I could of got to my buggy and whipped out 
my own artillery that’s in it, that maybe I wouldn’t 
of come along so accommodatin’, nor let that peppery 
kid friend of yours shoot first, as he’d of been so glad 
to of done, let him tell it.” The man ended with a 
sigh, Rick could not tell whether it was one of weari- 
ness from so long talking, or regret that Tommy and 
he were victors, living to triumph over their captive’s 
defeat. 

“ I believe I’ll take you to Doctor Porter first and 
hand you over later,” said Rick with an inspiration. 

“ I’m not sick, kind boy, nor crazy,” said the 
“ comic opera brigand.” 

“ No, but he is sick, blind, which is worse. He 
needs amusing, and if you wouldn’t amuse him, I 
don’t know ! ” cried Rick with conviction. 

“ Don’t you think you could see your way to letting 


254 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


me go altogether, not taking me anywheres ? ” sug- 
gested the brigand persuasively. 

Rick shook his head with entire decision. “ I most 
certainly do not ” he said. “ It’s all very fine to laugh 
at you, as long as I’ve got you at the point of this 
little six-shooter, but if I hadn’t got you at all, and 
you were this minute driving off with Miss Coggs 
your agonized captive — well, it wouldn’t be so funny 
as it might be. You’ve done a pretty bad thing; the 
kind of thing that we’re not used to in old Chagford, 
and I’m afraid you’ll find the old town ready to board 
you for a good while. She’ll want to make sure of 
keeping a genius like you under lock and key.” 

The young man sighed. “ I’m not thirty years old,” 
he said. “ It’s the awfulest pity to put young folks 
in prison. I ain’t more’n ten years older’n you, if I’m 
that. You ask Miss Coggs if anybody could of been 
politer. You’d think now, — wouldn’t you? — that a 
little scheme for makin’ money, that didn’t hurt 
nobody at all, might be looked at, we’ll say, with 
blinders.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Rick at a loss how to reply 
to his singular incumbrance. “ They may use a mag- 
nifying glass, you know.” 

Tommy turned to Taizie after Rick had gone and 
stood looking down upon her, without attempting to 
revive her. The look in his honest eyes was almost 
maternal as he pityingly thought of the fear that she 


RESCUES 255 

must have suffered and the courage she had shown, 
according to her captor’s testimony. 

“ But anybody’d have known you would have been 
game, Taizie,” Tommy said aloud. 

Taizie opened her eyes, closed them, opened them 
again with a look of terror, which melted into won- 
der, then lighted with a great joy as Taizie’s mind 
took in the fact that it was Tommy Giddings, no other 
than good old Tommy, and not an enemy, looking 
down upon her. She did not speak, nor attempt to 
move, nor did Tommy make a sound or motion either, 
rightly judging that it was best not to hurry Taizie 
after her mental strain. 

It seemed to Taizie as though she were waking from 
a fantastic nightmare, but here she was in the woods, 
there stood a patient horse who was to have borne her 
away, she was weak and quivering — and there was 
Tommy! It could not have been a dream! 

Yet her first words expressed her sense of unreality. 

“ I’ll never eat anything that makes me dream such 
a dream again, Tommy,” she said with a wavering 
smile. 

Tommy bent over her with his face full of feeling, 
but all he said was : 

“ Better get up, Taize ; it’s too cold to lie on the 
ground now.” 

He held out his hands and Taizie put hers into 
them. Tommy pulled her to her feet and steadied her 


256 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


gently by her elbow when he saw that she swayed a 
little as she stood. 

“ Silly ! ” Taizie said in high disgust with herself. 
“ But honest to goodness, Tommy, I didn’t make a 
fuss as long as there didn’t seem to be any help for 
me. I never fainted in my life; none of the Coggs 
twins are fainters. Sensible, isn’t it, to faint when 
I saw you ? And not too flattering, is it ? — poor 
Tommy! But when I saw you, and it rushed over me 
that I wasn’t going off in that buggy, with that Herod 
of mine, after all, well — it sort of rushed over me, 
that’s all!” 

“Herod?” echoed Tommy, wondering. 

“ Because he tortured the innocents,” explained 
Taizie. “ I had to call him something, and he wouldn’t 
tell me his name. I don’t believe Rhoda would have 
liked me to go driving with a young man whose name 
I didn’t know, without a chaperon ! ” 

“Taizie, you’re a great kid!” cried Tommy in a 
burst of fervent admiration. “ You’d carry off any 
old bother with nonsense ! You — you beat the 
Dutch ! ” 

“ Did you think Herod was Dutch?” asked Taizie 
meekly. “ Though it was you and Rick beat him. 
When I remember how you longed for an excuse to 
shoot him, I’m almost afraid to go home with you! 
But as long as Rick carried off the weapon I suppose 
I may risk it. If we’re going, Tommy, mayn’t we 


RESCUES 


257 


start? Because I’m homesick for the palace and the 
Coggs twins, the rest of ’em, and for Rhoda and all 
the comforts of home — including supper, especially 
coffee! Abduction has gone to my knees; they’re 
wobbly! Take me home, Tommy!” 

“ Bless your heart, Taizie, I’m ready!” cried 
Tommy, hastening to untie the horse’s halter. 
“ Come, I’ll help you in. I’m ready.” 

“ Oh, Tommy ! ” cried Taizie. “ Don’t you see that 
bundle there? Herod dropped it when he left us. It 
contains my coat and hat. Let me get it ; don’t leave 
my own dear Coggs garments! These things are 
killing me, eating my heart out — like a cutworm, 
from the outside ! ” 

“ Gather ’em up, crazy Taizie!” laughed Tommy. 
“ If you’d spoken before I untied the steed I’d have 
helped, but he wants to start.” 

“ How I sympathize with him! ” sighed Taizie, as 
she went to pick up her property. 

Tommy and Taizie drove along the woods road in 
silence for half a mile. It was growing late and the 
state of the road made it a careful matter to drive it 
in the gathering darkness. 

Taizie broke this silence. “ I wonder how I can 
ever prove how grateful I am to you, Tommy Gid- 
dings?” she said. “ You and Rick, but it seems as 
though it were more you who rescued me, some- 
how.” 


258 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Tommy’s heart beat quicker. He had been con- 
scious of a desire for that very effect, a desire that 
would have been mean, had it arisen from a wish to 
surpass Rick under other circumstances. It was only 
that Tommy longed to be able to render a supreme 
service to Taizie, and he could not help wishing that 
it had fallen to his lot to rescue her, single-handed and 
alone. 

Perhaps Taizie knew this, as girls generally know 
unspoken longings of this sort, or perhaps it was that 
Taizie, too, would have been glad to owe her rescue 
to no one but Tommy. 

Tommy was so young that he was capable of feel- 
ing a great deal that he could not express. Youth 
often feels more intensely than older years, but takes 
its refuge under emotion in inadequate words, while 
maturity exceeds its feelings by expression, some- 
times. 

“ As to being grateful, Taizie, you know that’s 
poppycock,” said Tommy now, while his heart 
thumped joyously. “ You’ve always been nice to me, 
all you Coggs twins have, and to Aunt Elona, and I 
guess the thanks are due on the other side. But there’s 
one thing I don’t want, since we’re talking about it: 
I don’t want you to do money favors for me. I know 
who bought Aunt Elona Deacon’s good-for-nothing 
stock, and what she wanted the money for, and that 
she told you about it, you girls — not you only, of 


RESCUES 


259 


course. Now, Taizie, I don’t want you to set me up 
in business, and that’s what it comes to, even if you 
do it second-hand.” 

“Oh, Tommy, I despise pride!” sighed Taizie. 
“ The wrong kind. Even the Coggs twins have pride, 
but, of course, theirs is the right kind!” Taizie 
laughed, but she was thoroughly in earnest. u I don’t 
like the pride that won’t take a favor from a real 
friend, any kind of a favor. What difference does it 
make whether it’s money or something else? I wish 
you wouldn’t feel that way! Now I’m awfully glad 
you rescued me. And isn’t that a heap bigger thing 
than money, ^ especially when you’ve a Grandfather 
Debbs who gives you lots, though he won’t see you, 
and you don’t have to do one thing to get it ? ” 

“ Taizie Coggs, it isn’t one bit the same thing to 
rescue a person and to give them money; you know 
it, so be honest! ” cried Tommy. 

“ I didn’t give you money! ” cried Taizie. “ I mean 
we didn’t. We can’t help it if you’ve an aunt that’s 
foolish over you! I will own up that rescuing and 
paying for things are different, but army mules tram- 
pling me couldn’t make me say it wasn’t a great deal 
bigger kindness — I mean saving a girl from getting 
carried off.” 

“ Taizie, if you liked a girl a whole lot, liked her — 
well, a whole lot, you know ! — would you want that 
girl, even if there were three other girls helping her, 


260 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


and they looked almost just like her, would you want 
that girl to be, say, a quarter of the one who set you 
up in the world? And have the rest who helped in 
it her sisters, so you’d owe your start to her family? 
Wouldn’t you rather hustle around and start yourself 
so, some day, you’d be man enough to — to — see if 
she’d like you a whole lot, too? ” Tommy stammered, 
but he was entirely unconscious of himself in this 
simple, yet indirect declaration. 

It did not seem to surprise Taizie. She looked 
straight into Tommy’s eyes with her own candid ones 
softer and sweeter than any one had ever seen Taizie’s 
mischievous eyes before. The smile on her merry 
lips was sweet and womanly, but her reply to Tommy’s 
boyish revelation of affection was wholly a young 
girl’s. 

“ If I were a boy, Tommy dear,” Taizie said softly, 
“ I wouldn’t care where the money came from that 
started me. I wouldn’t care if it came from the girl 
and her sisters, because I’d know she didn’t think it 
mattered. If she had a lot, and I didn’t, and if she 
cared just as much for me as I did for her, then I’d 
feel as though it was so much one thing that you 
couldn’t any more tell where it started than you could 
tell where a circle started, if you saw one drawn. It’s 
the caring that counts, not money, Tommy dear. If 
she had money and I hadn’t, I’d know that was just 
because it happened so — especially if I knew she had 


RESCUES 


261 


been poorer than poor, and always would have been, 
if a lawyer hadn’t gone out and found her, something 
like Pharaoh’s daughter and Moses! And I never, 
never in all this world would make her miserable by 
fussing over such a tiny thing as a big fortune is, 
because even very old people don’t live on earth long 
enough to spoil things by being proud and bothering. 
It’s caring that counts, Tommy Giddings; that’s why 
the Coggs twins couldn’t get spoiled by being rich — 
they just cared for one another and — and real things ! 
I’m not clever and wise, and I am the brimmest full 
of nonsense of all the four brimful Coggs twins, but 
I know enough to know this ! ” 

“ I guess that’s the biggest kind of wisdom, Taizie,” 
said Tommy, and his voice was not steady. “ I’ll try 
not to fuss, as you call it, to be big-minded. Still, 
you know, a fellow that’s worth his salt wants to be 
worth, well, his plums, for instance. You — you 
spoke as if there wouldn’t be much trouble about the 
girl liking the fellow a lot; a whole lot , Taizie, that 
would be ! ” 

Taizie looked at Tommy with her frank smile, the 
Coggs smile, which lit up the twin faces and revealed 
white teeth between curved red lips. 

“ It’s just as easy for a girl to like anybody, 
Tommy, as it is for a boy, easier maybe, because girls 
haven’t as many things to take up their attention,” 
she said. She laughed, but she was in earnest, and 


262 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


her laughter did not make her eyes less warm as they 
looked frankly at Tommy. 

“ Me, Taizie — and you? ” hinted Tommy. 

Taizie nodded. “ A girl can like a boy a whole lot, 
enough to — well, to be glad he liked her, too, but she 
couldn’t stand silliness and she wouldn’t want to talk 
about it, not if she was a Coggs twin. It’s comfortable 
to think about it, but, well, I guess the double twins 
aren’t sentimental! Chums are the best fun, T. Gid- 
dings, my dear, and I’m awfully glad you think so, 
too.” 

Tommy looked for an instant as if he was going 
to protest against the sentiment which Taizie calmly 
attributed to him as his own, but he thought better of 
it and contented himself with a comrade pat on Tai- 
zie’s shoulder. 

“ You’re a great Taizie, and there’s no mistake 
about it ! ” he said. “ There’s one thing : I’d rather 
be your chum than any one else’s — any relation you 
please ! ” 

“ Good boy, Tommy,” said Taizie, closing the sub- 
ject. “ You may be glad then, for I want you, too. 
Is this the public coming out to meet us ? ” 

“ As sure as guns ! ” cried Tommy, after one glance 
ahead. 

There were a good many people hurrying along 
toward them. They saw Mimi Hunt, Doris Clark, 
Cord Tilden surrounding Doctor Porter’s tall figure, 


RESCUES 


263 


Nancy, of course, at his side. They saw the Coggs 
girls, Taizie’s own twin in advance of Maizie and 
Daisy. 

“ Stop the horse, Tommy! ” cried Taizie, one hand 
clutching at the reins, the other grasping the buggy 
side as she prepared to jump. 

Tommy obediently stopped. Taizie was over the 
wheel in an instant and she and her bereft other selves 
broke into a run from the opposite direction, and met, 
in a tumultuous onslaught, midway of their course. 

The four tawny heads gathered together in an em- 
brace that made them look like one seen in a four- 
sided mirror. 

Maizie, Daisy and Hazie hugged Taizie, and Taizie 
hugged them, all four uttering incoherent sounds, sob- 
bing, laughing, screaming, behaving as if they had 
gone mad with joy. 

“Oh, Taizie, my dear, my dear!” cried Rhoda 
seizing Taizie as the twins’ embraces slackened for a 
breathless moment. 

She folded Taizie close in her arms, and then Nancy 
Porter caught her, and all the other girls followed 
suit, till Taizie was all but demolished. 

“ I might — as well — be kidnapped — as killed ! ” 
gasped poor Taizie. 

“ Taizie, dear, I’ve been stirred out of all remem- 
brance of my troubles by the thought of your dan- 
ger,” said Doctor Porter. “ I could not rest. I made 


264 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Nancy let me come with the others to learn if there 
were tidings of you. We were badly frightened, my 
child; we could not remember the loss of eyes when 
we had to face loss of you, or your being in danger.” 

“ I knew if I got into a dreadful scrape you would 
be interested and better, doctor darling! ” said Taizie 
with a laugh that came near being a sob. 

“ Where’s Tommy? ” cried Maizie, though Tommy 
sat, the most conspicuous person about, alone in the 
buggy enjoying the scene. 

“ Tommy! ” cried Maizie and Daisy, and fell upon 
him wildly. 

“ What shall we do to you? ” cried Hazie. 

“ Wait till you catch Rick ; don’t do it to me alone,” 
implored Tommy. “Let me drive Taizie home; she 
is starving.” 

“We couldn’t let her go without us,” said Maizie. 
“ The car’s waiting, with Elijah in it, almost as anx- 
ious as we were. We’ll be home in no time. Ceescy 
has a big supper. Come, too, Tommy! Come every- 
body, doctor, Nancy, Mimi, Doris, Cord, all of you. 
We’ll celebrate!” 

“ Not to-night, Maizie. Take Taizie home and 
make her go to bed early; she will need rest,” said 
Doctor Porter. “ I’ll be up to see her in the morning. 
We’ll celebrate another time. But I think we’re all 
giving thanks in our hearts to-night, and that’s the 
truest of celebrations.” 


RESCUES 265 

Somehow the double twins, mercifully undivided, 
reached their waiting car. 

“ Glory hallelujah and praises be! ” ejaculated Eli- 
jah, as he saw Taizie, though the babel of happy 
voices as they approached had told him that he was 
to see her. 

They drove home as rapidly as the law allowed, 
falling silent as they went. The other three twins 
managed to keep a hand on some part of Taizie all the 
way. Tommy, who had given over the horse to some 
one and had come with the Coggs to a supper he sadly 
needed, turned in his seat beside Elijah to watch the 
happiness that was not less his than the girls, perhaps 
more his, if all were known. 

“ Taizie, we have heard of a great German special- 
ist, an oculist, who can all but perform miracles on 
eyes,” Daisy said suddenly. 

“Oh! Doctor Porter?” cried Taizie. 

“We wondered. He is in Germany; it would be 
hard and dreadfully expensive to get him here,” said 
Hazie slowly. 

“ But if we could and if he could — cure the doc- 
tor, I mean — what a way to celebrate my rescue that 
would be! ” cried Taizie. “ A second rescue, rescuing 
the doctor from blindness, because I was saved, but 
most because we love him so ? ” 

“ If we could! ” sighed Maizie. 

“ If we can, you mean, we will! ” Taizie corrected 


her. 


CHAPTER XIV 


COGGS SISTERS, IMPORTERS 

HE double twins went down to Doc- 
tor Porter’s the morning after Tai- 
zie’s abduction. 

“ Not a bit the worse for it, 
either! ” as Letty Hetty said admir- 
admitted them. “If there’s one thing 
calculated to make an aging woman 
wish she could hold on to youth it’s the way it goes 
through things and don’t show it! Worry don’t leave 
any more mark on young faces’n a skipped stone does 
on a pond’s face. Doctor Porter’s waiting to find out 
what you goin’ to get done to that man. They’re 
holdin’ him on just disorderly conduct charge.” 

“ Herod?” asked Taizie cheerfully. 

“ Only that ain’t one bit his name,” said Letty 
Hetty. “ He’s told it. What you s’pose ’tis ? ” 

“ Hopeful Steele,” said Hazie promptly, and her 
duplicate sisters laughed. 

“ No. Reginald Claude Dill ! ” cried Letty Hetty, 
pausing before the door of Nancy’s sitting-room 
where the Porters were gathered. 

266 



more’n another 


“COGGS SISTERS, IMPORTERS ” 267 


“Dill! I knew he was some kind of a pickle !” 
exclaimed Taizie. 

“ Reginald Claude ! ” Maizie cried. “ Doesn’t he 
sound like the hero of one of the novels Rhoda doesn’t 
like us to waste time over, because they don’t give us 
any better taste in reading than we had before ! ” 

“ You wouldn’t hurt little Reggie, would you, doc- 
tor? ” asked Daisy, opening the door and heading the 
little Coggs procession into the room. 

“No need of asking if you’re all right after the 
kidnapping ! ” cried Nancy, flying up to welcome the 
double twins. 

“ Your nerves are still the magnetic needle sort that 
settle back to equilibrium as soon as their jar is over,” 
said Mrs. Porter, patting Taizie’s shoulder. “We are 
more than thankful you are safe, Taizie dear; we 
spent some anxious hours yesterday. But, do you 
know, your captor is positively funny. He reveals 
moods which might be dangerous, but usually he is 
actually amusing.” 

“ The Coggs girls couldn’t have anything happen 
to them that wasn’t funny,” said Maizie. “ If we were 
in a shipwrack it would turn out to be a hat rack.” 

“ It’s ship wreck, Maize ! ” screamed Hazie, falling 
helplessly over the arm of her chair, laughing with the 
others. 

“ Isn’t that a shame ! It would have been such a 
nice joke ! ” said Maizie unabashed, “ Can’t expect 


268 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

all four of us never to make a mistake, when we didn’t 
make anything else such a little while ago. What are 
you going to do with that man ? What made him try 
to steal Taizie? ” 

“ What is done with him depends on you,” said 
Doctor Porter. “ He is held on a charge of disor- 
derly conduct till you appear to make the more serious 
charge. It is certain that he deserves severe punish- 
ment, yet — I can’t quite explain why, even to myself 
— I can’t feel that he deserves it. I willingly admit 
it, but — I can’t justify letting him off, only he is 
playful in his ways ! ” 

“ That’s a good enough reason,” exclaimed Daisy. 
“ That’s why you always let us off. Whatever made 
him think of stealing Taizie? ” 

“ He did not think of stealing any special twin,” 
said Doctor Porter with his quiet smile. “ I won’t 
have Taizie conceited over it. He had been watching 
and hoping for a chance to abduct one of you for 
several days. Taizie happened to play into his hands 
by electing to walk home that day from Chagford 
Falls. Of course all he wanted was to hold the Coggs 
twin he might capture for a ransom. But the reason 
for wanting the ransom is so fantastic that I’m sure 
you’ll never guess it. What do you think he wanted 
to do with the money ? ” 

“ Raise sheep,” guessed Hazie. 

“ Raise Cain,” Taizie amended. 


“COGGS SISTERS, IMPORTERS” 269 


“ Get a barber shop and barb,” suggested Maizie. 

“ Go as a missionary,” said Daisy. 

“ You’re all wrong, though you aren’t much less 
fantastic-minded than Reginald Claude,” Doctor Por- 
ter smiled at the double twins. “ Reginald Claude 
wanted the ransom to buy a balloon.” 

“A — Oh, my gracious!” cried Taizie, and the 
four Coggs, and the Porters with them, laughed till the 
tears came. 

“ What for? What on earth for ?” gasped Maizie. 

“To join a circus and give exhibition balloon ascen- 
sions,” explained Doctor Porter. “ It seems that has 
been the dearest ambition of his life; I should judge 
that it was, in fact, the only ambition of his life. It 
seemed so touchingly small boyish that, when he con- 
fessed it to me, I felt not only like letting him off 
from his just punishment, but like setting him up with 
a balloon on the spot.” 

The four Coggs twins nodded hard. “ Sure ! ” said 
Maizie decidedly. “ I wouldn’t like to lock up any- 
body who wanted to be in the air; it’s bad enough 
to put a common walker in jail.” 

“ I’ll tell you what let’s do ! ” Daisy had an inspi- 
ration. “ We’ll all of us go down and scare him into 
blue fits, make him think he’s going to get the prose- 
cutingest kind of a prosecution and a sentence that’ll 
bring him out just a few days late for his own funeral, 
and then let’s offer to be noble and not punish him, if 


270 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


he’ll promise never, never to be a naughty Reginald 
Claude again. I’ll bet it’s that hifaluting name that 
made him want to go up in a balloon ! ” 

“ I know something still better,” cried Maizie. 
“ Get him to go to work at something or other and 
tell him if he’ll work hard and save up toward his 
balloon we’ll help him buy it.” 

“ And use our influence to get him in with a circus,” 
added Hazie. 

" We haven’t any influence with a circus ; we merely 
are one!” commented Taizie. 

“ But I do love the Home Missions my twins are 
founding and the next time we have a meeting I’m 
going to sing : ‘ Rescue the Perishing ’ and then 
‘ Throw Out the Life Line,’ for a what-do-you-call-it, 
do-it-over-again ? An encore ! ” Doctor Porter 
turned toward his wife with a smile that would have 
been an exchange of glances once. 

“ Like most of the Coggs twins’ ideas there’s a fine 
mixture of sense and nonsense in this one of Mai- 
zie’s,” he said. “ Perhaps we can get our ‘ gentle vil- 
lain ’ to amend his ways in order to attain his balloon 
— which is only another way of saying to attain his 
ideal. We all of us will do a good deal for that, and 
many of us have ambitions as inflated and fantastic as 
Reginald Claude’s balloon. He must have had a fool- 
ish mother to have been christened such a name as 
that. Perhaps she was his extenuating circumstance! 


“COGGS SISTERS, IMPORTERS ” 271 


We shall not be considered sensible, but I think we are 
right to give this fellow a chance.” 

“ I’d like to give everybody in all this world a 
chance ! ” cried Maizie springing to her feet. “ We’ve 
had such a fine one. Will you tell them down at the 
lock-up that we’re not going to bother with Reginald 
Claude? And could you ask him, for us, whether he 
likes our plan? We’d hate to have to go down and 
call on him, Doctor Porter.” 

“ I’ll attend to the case, Maizie,” said the doctor. 
“If he likes the plan, as you mildly put it — one 
would expect him to be pretty thankful to escape his 
punishment — I’ll get him employment in Chagford 
where he can be watched. There’s one thing about 
being blind : nobody wants to refuse my requests. I’m 
sure I can place this man and further your missionary 
work.” 

“ Oh, but if only you could be cured 1 ” cried Hazie 
impetuously. 

“ I’m getting adjusted to it, my dear, and that’s 
the next best thing,” said the doctor, with his 
old kindly smile subdued into an expression of pa- 
tience. 

Nancy threw on her sweater and went to the gate 
to see the twins off. 

“ Twinsies, you looked at one another when you 
sa id — when Hazie said that about daddy’s being 
cured. Have you heard any one say that it might 


272 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


be ? Miss Allaire, Doctor Davidson, any one ? ” she 
cried. 

Maizie, at whom she looked, shook her head. “ No, 
Nancy, dear, we haven’t. But it always seems as 
though he might be when you see him; he’s so splen- 
did each time, all over again,” she said. 

“ Oh,” sighed Nancy falling back, drooping in every 
line of her slender body. “ But I’m afraid that works 
the other way. I begin to see that maybe he is allowed 
to be blind just to prove how splendid he really is, to 
show what a great man can do without seeing, that 
he can love God as well and be just as useful when he 
has lost his greatest possession as he was before, and 
so have even more influence than ever. But, oh, I 
want him to see mother and me! Just to see mother 
and me again! My daddy dearest can bear it, but 
sometimes I can’t ! I’m always reaching out for little 
straws of hope, like Hazie’s saying that and your 
looking at one another, then getting pushed back into 
the hopeless pit ! Don’t mind me, twins dear ! Once 
in a while I behave like this, as if it were all new and 
unbearable, but not often, truly.” 

Nancy’s head drooped on the gatepost and she shook 
with tearless sobs. 

The double twins encircled her, patting and stroking 
her without speaking, their tears falling, and Nancy’s 
little dog Fred came wagging his whole body to her, 
imploring her to look up and see that he was there 


“COGGS SISTERS, IMPORTERS” 273 


to do anything he could do for her. Nancy choked 
back her unexpected storm of grief, kissed the twin 
nearest her, hugged Fred and smiled bravely. 

“ Father is growing happier, trying his best to ad- 
just himself to it,” she said. “ Being made head of 
the hospital has helped him a great deal and he is as 
interested in its coming opening as he can be. Mother 
and I are learning to carry the burden, but once in a 
while it slips crooked like this and we don’t carry it so 
steadily. I suppose it has to. Don’t look so sorry, 
twinsies; I’m sorry I troubled you.” 

“ Great Scott, as though that mattered ! ” Taizie 
burst out. “ What we want to do is help. I believe 
we’d unDebbs ourselves, not be Peter Debbs’ grand- 
daughters at all, not have the palace, nor the car, just 
be our poor selves again, working in New York, if it 
would cure the doctor.” 

“ I believe you would,” Nancy heartily agreed. 
“ You’re the best Coggs twins on earth! There’s one 
thing : Daddy dearest is made to feel how people love 
him and esteem him, and maybe it’s better to see that 
than it is to see the things one’s eyes show. I’m all 
right now; don’t worry! Good-by and bless you! 
We felt terrible when you were in danger, Taizie. 
We’d care just as much what happened to you as you 
do for our troubles. Father walked the floor after 
Rick went to hunt for you until he came back — with 
Reginald Claude at the end of his revolver! ” Nancy 


274 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


laughed, shutting up her eyes with amusement, proving 
that she had once more got the upper hand of the 
sorrow that must always be a great one. 

The double twins drove away. Taizie had long ago 
attained her ambition and drove their car when she 
preferred to. Maizie, too, drove it well, but Daisy 
and Hazie were satisfied to be passengers and made 
no attempt at driving. 

“ It’s awful ! ” cried Daisy, out of a long silence as 
they purred their way homeward through the wintry 
denuded streets. Her sisters knew that she, like the 
others, had been dwelling on the thought of Doctor 
Porter’s blindness. 

“ Dreadful,” Hazie agreed. “ I suppose some 
blindness can’t be cured, but how do we know his is 
that sort? You wouldn’t think it would be.” 

“ If we could get that great German oculist we 
heard about to come over and try,” said Maizie slowly. 
“ It would cost a lot and we’ve got to scrimp a while 
to make up Mrs. Deacon’s stock, hers and the Bruces, 
but we could mortgage the palace and save till we 
paid it off.” 

“ Or sell it and board till we could buy another 
house,” said Taizie in all seriousness, though this 
suggestion made the other twins smile. 

“We could do it somehow, because we would,” said 
Daisy. The only thing is would the big German 
doctor come and could Doctor Porter be cured? ” 


“COGGS SISTERS, IMPORTERS ” 275 

“ Let’s write the oculist and find out whether he’d 
come,” cried Taizie, almost running the car into the 
gutter in the excitement of her own suggestion. 

“ And what he’d charge,” Hazie supplemented her. 
“ But for goodness’ sake, Taizie, don’t break all our 
necks and make it necessary to get surgeons, too ! ” 

“ No necessity at all for surgeons, if you’ve broken 
your neck, Hazel, my poor foolish twin sister,” said 
Taizie loftily. 

“ We’ll import an oculist,” said Daisy thoughtfully. 
“ I wish I could remember what we learned with 
Rhoda about tariff and duties. If we’re importers 
we’ll have to understand free trade and protection and 
high and low duties — and we can’t ! ” Daisy inter- 
rupted herself with pretended despair and a chuckle. 

“ To think of curing Doctor Porter! Us — we — 
which is it? — doing it! ” cried Taizie, regarding the 
miracle as all but wrought since it had been decided 
that they were to ask the great oculist if he would 
come to America. Taizie was nothing if not sanguine. 

“ We’ll be the Coggs Sisters, Limited, Importers,” 
Daisy said, resuming her idea of the coming of the 
oculist. “ I wonder what ‘ limited ’ means, tacked on 
a firm like that ? ” 

“ Doesn’t fit us anyway,” said Maizie. “ We’re not 
limited; we’re the limit! Everybody thinks so, I 
guess, though they don’t show it.” 

“ We’re getting nice,” said Hazie, defending their 


276 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


quartette so solemnly that there was a trio of laughter 
from the other three. 

“ I don’t think we’re the limit now,” she persisted. 
“ Maybe we were, but we’re not. We’re quite nice. 
Not nice like Nancy, but nice like Coggses. There 
aren’t any nicer girls anywhere than Maizie, Daisy 
and Taizie Co — ” 

“ And Hazie Coggs,” Maizie interrupted her. 
“We’re all alike, so drop the modest humbug, Haze! 
Good thing to come out without Elijah once in a while. 
If we had him along we couldn’t throw bouquets at 
ourselves this way without hitting him in the back. 
We’re improving, little sister, but we’re sunflowers; 
we never’ll be lilies-of-the-valley.” 

“ ’Specially sunflowers on top,” commented Taizie, 
touching significantly a tawny lock that had escaped 
her hat and streamed out from her face on the wind. 

Taizie took the car up to the imposing front door 
of the palace with skilful avoidance of the edge 
of the lowest step, yet stopping directly before it. 

The double twins found Rhoda watching for them. 
She came out to speak to them. 

“ There’s a reporter here,” she said low and rapidly. 
“ He’s from a Boston paper. He wants to interview 
you. It seems last night’s Chagford paper had an 
account of Taizie’s kidnapping. Do, pray, girls, be 
careful what you say! Don’t play pranks. Nonsense 
isn’t understood when recorded in type, unlabelled.” 


“COGGS SISTERS, IMPORTERS” 277 


“ Wait till he hears about the balloon ! ” cried Taizie 
jubilantly, to Rhoda’s dismay; she had no clue to 
what this could mean and Taizie’s springing out of 
the car, plainly ready to fill the reporter’s ears, terri- 
fied her. Rhoda knew that the double twins were too 
grown up to afford to be talked about and misunder- 
stood. 

“ Take her around to the garage, Elijah the 
Profit,” said Taizie, handing over the car to Elijah, 
whom the double twins sincerely rated a “ profit,” as 
Taizie had dubbed him. “ Come on and be inter- 
viewed, my sisters ! Always wanted to be. Isn’t this 
great ! ” 

Rhoda followed looking anxious, as well she might, 
for when the Coggs twins were primed for mischief 
there was no conjecturing what they might say. 

The reporter proved to be a young man, not more 
than twenty-five. He had a pleasant face and, as 
Daisy said later, “ wore a brown suit and a fountain 
pen.” 

He arose to meet the double twins who visibly af- 
fected him, as they did all who saw them for the first 
time, with utter wonder over their four times repeated 
identity. 

“ My card,” he said, much more embarrassed than 
the girls. 

Hazie took the card he extended, being nearest to 
him. She read aloud: 


278 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ Despard Longacre. The Current Day.” Then 
she looked at him, struggling not to laugh. 

“ I represent The Current Day; you must know the 
paper,” said the young man. “ Will you kindly let 
me interview you ? ” 

“ Mr. Longacre,” said Taizie solemnly, “ Lve al- 
ways wanted to be interviewed, but I never expected 
to do anything interesting enough to get into the 
papers. And now it’s really Reginald Claude who did 
it; he stole me. But please don’t interview him!” 

“ Are you the one ? Reginald Claude ! Is that the 
man’s name? Oh, ginger, what luck! Keep on talk- 
ing like that; it’ll make a corking interview!” cried 
the young man, losing all trace of embarrassment in 
a burst of joy. 

“ Couldn’t talk any other way,” Taizie assured him, 
sharing his pleasure. “ Is that a good interviewing 
way? That’s dandy! You don’t need our history; 
everybody in Chagford’ll tell you that, how we were 
so poor and got rich being granddaughters. You 
know all that, don’t you ? ” 

“ I sure do,” said the young man, making rapid 
notes. “ But it’s coming alive. Please tell me how 
you were kidnapped, tell it your own way and don’t 
leave out a thing. I’ll boil it down, if it needs it.” 

So Taizie, with a relish that there was no mista- 
king, launched out into the story of her adventure. 
It lost nothing on her lively tongue. Before she had 


# 


“COGGS SISTERS, IMPORTERS” 279 


talked long Despard Longacre was convulsed and the 
three other twins and Rhoda were listening and laugh- 
ing as though they had never heard it all before. 

Taizie told with gusto of the coming of Rick and 
Tommy. Somehow, without saying anything di- 
rectly to this effect, she conveyed an impression that 
Tommy’s coming to her rescue was more important 
than that Rick had come. 

The reporter smiled and made a note to remind him 
to hint at a dawning romance at this point in his story. 
The other three twins glanced at one another with 
dismay. It was the first time that it had occurred to 
them as an actual probability that an outsider might 
one day be grafted upon their fourfold completeness. 

When Taizie reached the sequel to her story and 
said that her abductor was to be allowed a chance to 
reform, to gratify his longing for a balloon to exhibit 
in a circus, the reporter’s joy knew no bounds. Rhoda, 
too, to whom this was as new as to him, fell face 
downward into a sofa pillow and laughed till she cried. 

“ It’s preposterous, it’s farce comedy, I never heard 
anything half so absurd! If this interview doesn’t 
make a hit, my name isn’t Despard Longacre,” de- 
clared the owner of that name. 

“ I thought a despard was a kind of a — kind of a 
— well, a kind of a bandit,” said Hazie, in a crescendo 
of hesitation, halting over her words and blurting 
them out at the end. 


280 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ And that I had a hand in the kidnapping ? No, 
I didn’t,” said Mr. Longacre. “ You aren’t thinking 
of a desperado, are you ? ” 

“ Maybe,” said Hazie undismayed. “ I guess I 
am. And you might say,” she added, glancing at 
Rhoda, mischief in her eyes, “ that we’re going to 
import — if we can. Coggs Sisters, Limited, Im- 
porters, you know.” 

“ What are you to import? Paris gowns?” asked 
Mr. Longacre, guessing a joke was lurking some- 
where, unseen of him. 

“ Hazie ! ” exclaimed Rhoda imploringly. 

“Not gowns; we can’t tell what it will be. Per- 
haps we can’t get it,” laughed Taizie. “ You’d better 
not put in the importing part; it’s true, yet it’s not 
what you think. Anyway, it doesn’t belong to the 
kidnapping part of the story.” 

Maizie had been out of the room for a moment. 
She now returned. 

“ You came from Boston this morning and have 
been waiting, Mr. Longacre; we were a great while 
coming back. Cleopatra Samaria Cantata has a lunch 
ready for us. What’s the matter? Oh, yes; that 
name! Isn’t it funny? We’re used to it, but it 
nearly killed us at first. We call her C. S. C. — 
Ceescy — for short. She’s the biggest darkey, big- 
gest-hearted, too! Come, please, and try her cook- 
ing.” 


“COGGS SISTERS, IMPORTERS” 281 


“ One minute till I make a note of her. I’ve got 
to work that name into the story somewhere. Cleo- 
patra Samaria Cantata! If that doesn’t beat every 
other coon name to a frazzle ! ” cried the young man, 
jotting down his note frantically and then follow- 
ing his surprising young hostesses into the dining- 
room. 

Lunch was a merry and tardy meal. It was not 
over till after three o’clock. Its sauce was laughter, 
the best of sauces, but Cleopatra Samaria Cantata’s 
skilful cooking needed no heightening relish. 

Despard Longacre looked from twin to twin, hearty 
liking, admiration, sheer wonder in his eyes. He had 
never met with anything at all like these duplicate, 
happy, frank girls in the whole course of his consider- 
able experience. 

He went away with rich material for several inter- 
views and left behind him the best of good impres- 
sions. He also left a promise to return “ for per- 
sonal and private interviews, not intended for pub- 
lication, ” as he put it. 

After he had gone, the double twins banished Rhoda 
from their councils and put their heads together to 
concoct a letter to the great German oculist who 
might possibly restore Doctor Porter’s sight. The 
problem was how to write the letter so that he would 
consent to come and try. 

“Of course it won’t be German, but he can get 


282 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


some one to translate it for him,” said Hazie, on 
whom, as the most intellectual of the twins, the chief 
responsibility of the composition fell. 

The letter was written at last and dispatched. Se- 
crecy was so far from being a double twin habit that 
the mystery attending upon this performance troubled 
Rhoda. 

Taizie’s keen eyes saw this. She went up to Rhoda 
and hugged her. 

“ Trust us, Rhoda, and don’t worry. You’re to 
know all about it by and by. It’s not a prank; in 
fact it’s too good to be true. Honest to goodness, it’s 
nothing you wouldn’t approve,” she said. 

“ All right, Teresa dear. I don’t need your ‘ honest 
to goodness ’ oath. If you say it’s all right, I’m satis- 
fied,” said Rhoda, her face clearing. 

“ That’s the best of this household, we don’t need 
one another’s vows. We’ve an awful confiding confi- 
dence in all of us,” said Daisy truthfully. 

The following Sunday’s issue of The Current Day 
contained a long story of “ The Fairy Fortunes of the 
Coggs Twins.” Mr. Longacre had pleaded for pic- 
tures and Taizie had given him snap-shots of the 
palace, the lake, of the new hospital, almost ready 
now for its opening, which he wanted because the 
twins had given the land for it, and of themselves. 
The interview was, therefore, fully illustrated, and 
Despard Longacre had written it well, bringing out 


“COGGS SISTERS, IMPORTERS” 283 


the fantastic humor of the double twins’ adventures, 
yet delicately conveying a true impression of the 
sweetness that underlay all that they did. 

“ The finest of true gentlewomen,” the interview 
ended, “ are these young granddaughters of that self- 
made man, old Peter Debbs, whose beginnings were 
so poor, but whom wealth cannot spoil, who use it 
with simple gratitude, aiming to be happy and to give 
happiness. There is a mysterious hint that these four 
young women are intending to enter an importing 
business as The Coggs Sisters, Limited. But this is 
not yet ripe for the public, nor is it certain that it is 
not one more of the many playful rumors with 
which these merry girls like to excite their acquaint- 
ances.” 

“ Oh, think of his putting that in ! ” cried Maizie. 
“ We told him not to.” 

“ He wants to play a little himself, maybe,” sug- 
gested Hazie. “ Well, I think that’s a fine interview, 
the most interesting story I ever read, and it’s great 
to be in the paper, just as if you were the President’s 
family, or a White House bride, or something like 
that.” 

“ Or a princess in the palace, ‘ ladies of the lake,’ as 
.Doctor Porter calls us,” suggested Daisy. “ We’ll 
have to get at fixing this house over before it has its 
pictures in the paper again. I begin to see it is pretty 
mixy.” 


284 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ If we can afford it. Importing may be expensive 
and stock buying we know is,” said Maizie, folding 
the paper carefully to avoid creases in the reproduc- 
tions of the pictures. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE HERR DOKTOR 

HE double twins waited with feverish 
impatience for their reply to the let- 
ter which they had dispatched to 
Germany. Their impatience was so 
great that they began to look for the 
reply before their letter had been delivered. The days 
went slowly by ; they knew that, by the most generous 
allowance, their letter had been received more than 
three weeks, yet the answer for which their souls 
burned and yearned did not appear. 

“We never enclosed a German stamp for reply !” 
cried Hazie. “ Maybe that’s why ! ” 

“ As though a great man like that would fuss about 
a five-cent stamp!” exclaimed Taizie disdainfully. 

“ You never can tell where great people are going 
to show up little,” said Hazie, with unexpected knowl- 
edge of human nature. “ And the Germans are all 
thrifty. But s’posing he doesn’t answer at all ! ” 

“ I wonder how many more times we are going to 
suppose that?” said Maizie. 

“ In the meantime — the meanest kind of time — 



285 



286 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


I’m talking about, the time we’re waiting — do let’s 
try to think of something else, even if we can’t.” 

“ And it isn’t such a fearfully long time, if only we 
weren’t seething and sizzling, and it’s really far from 
a mean time,” said Taizie with a sudden rejection of 
her previous impatience. “ The Chagford Hospital is 
opened and named for Doctor Porter — wasn’t he 
pleased when they said it was to be called St. Mark’s, 
indirectly after him? ” 

“ And did you see Nancy applauding as hard as she 
could and crying harder ? ” asked Daisy. “ She and 
Mrs. Porter were so proud and glad that Chagford 
honored the doctor ! ” 

“ Ah, but afterward ! ” Rhoda Drummond cried, 
shuddering. 

The Chagford Hospital had been opened with appro- 
priate ceremony. At a crowded public meeting the 
three Chagfords had accepted and dedicated this im- 
portant institution, following the addresses usual to 
such an occasion with an entertainment. Nancy Por- 
ter as Portia, the doctor as Shylock, Rick Lovering as 
Bassanio, were to give the casket scene and the court 
scene from “ The Merchant of Venice,” in costume. 
A cry of fire had arisen in that densely crowded hall, 
and Doctor Porter, forgetting his blindness, had 
rushed into the crowd, controlled it by the sheer force 
of his magnetic voice and presence and, with Nancy 
at his side and Rick playing the violin, as only Rick 


THE HERR DOKTOR 


287 


could play, had led the crowd in' an orderly march 
through the hall, past the smoke pouring out by the 
gallery stairs, into safety. 

It had been a deed of heroism tremendous for a 
sound man to accomplish; it was little short of a 
miracle to have been done by one who was blind. 

To the doctor’s instant courage, his presence of 
mind, his power to sway and to lead human beings 
was due that day Chagford’s deliverance from a trag- 
edy frightful beyond conjecture. But that the doctor 
had stayed and controlled the fear-maddened throng 
hundreds would have filled the new hospital with 
agony, hundreds would have been borne to rest in the 
peaceful Chagford cemeteries on the outskirts of the 
three Chagfords. 

“ Oh, Rhoda ! ” Maizie groaned, repeating Rhoda’s 
shudder. “To think how near it came to a panic! 
I see it all the time, that rush forward, and Doctor 
Porter, blind, but going as straight as if he could see, 
to stop it ! I know some of us would have been killed. 
We are so excited over even little things, we twins! ” 

“ Unspeakably awful, but how glorious ! ” cried 
Rhoda. “ None of us can live long enough to forget 
that scene, Doctor Porter in the Shylock costume, 
Rick so transfigured and beautiful, playing like one 
inspired, as he led the people, clad in that velvet cos- 
tume that set off his wonderful beauty so perfectly! 
And our Nancy dearest, so frail and white and brave 


288 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


in her black law gown and Portia mortarboard cap, 
not faltering a bit, but marching with her head up, her 
pale face all glowing eyes — Oh, what a joy it is to 
know that there are souls so highly wrought that 
even their own deadly fear and peril cannot daunt 
them 1 ” 

“ Well, I suppose there isn’t any one who saw it 
will forget it, Rhoda,” said Daisy slowly. “ I guess 
there was just one long breath drawn in by all the 
Chagfords together that night, and that when it was 
breathed out it was just one big sigh from all the 
Chagfords that meant: God bless Doctor Porter! ” 

“ That’s a nice way to say it, Daize ! ” cried Maizie 
looking at her twin with admiring surprise. 

Hazie openly wiped her eyes. “ That’s why I can’t 
stand it to have him blind, blind to the end! If only 
he could see Mrs. Porter and Nancy! They did so 
love to see one another! That’s why I’ll die in tiny 
scraps of bursting if we don’t hear something soon 
from that German man,” she said. 

“ Of course that’s why,” said Taizie in an unwonted 
mood of discouragement. “ Yet that’s why I’m sure 
he either can’t, or won’t, help our doctor. Because, 
you know, the Lord must love Doctor Porter; he’s 
exactly the Lord’s kind of man, and they say the 
Lord afflicts those He loves.” 

Maizie stared, then she laughed. “ I don’t believe 
it; not that way,” she said. “ It must mean people 


THE HERR DOKTOR 


289 


who need it; of course you’d send anybody you loved 
what they needed, but Doctor Porter doesn’t need af- 
fliction; he uses happiness so beautifully. I don’t 
believe for a minute that the Lord makes people un- 
happy, unless they need it, and I do believe good 
people must have a great deal done for them to pay 
them back. So I’m going to expect Doctor Porter to 
be better, somehow, some day, to pay him. That’s 
more sensible than your idea, Taize, and more Coggsy 
to expect good luck. Though it isn’t one bit Coggsy 
to be talking about what the Lord does, as if we knew, 
when we’re about the last ones who would ! ” 

“ Miss Maizie, Miss Twin Young Ladies, any of 
you,” said an unctuous voice at the door. 

“Yes, Ceescy,” called Maizie. “We’re all four 
here; come in.” 

Cleopatra Samaria Cantata’s immense bulk ap- 
peared in the doorway. She was the same great roll- 
ing creature, black and solemn externally, “ quite pink 
and white by nature,” as Hazie had once discovered. 

In her hand Ceescy carried an envelope which 
looked worn and browned, “ rather as if her color had 
run on it,” Taizie said later. 

Nobody dreamed that there was any personal in- 
terest for the double twins in this battered envelope 
till Ceescy said : 

“ It’s the afternoon out of ev’ybody — ’mongst an’ 
’mid de people you hires, twin young ladies, ’ceptin’ 


290 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


dis biggest one an’ fustest one you sees. Miss Dorinda 
Allaire, likewise Miss Belinda Allaire, dey drives in 
yere, but didn’t have no time to stop. Dey says I’s 
to tell you de pos’master hands ’em out a letter, askin’ 
’em please would dey ’cipher fo’ which it was meant 
fo’. An’ Miss Belinda she say it’s done been pow’ful 
far goin’ roun’ an’ strayin’, an’ it’s been so wrote over 
an’ han’led by hands dats black, not like Cleopatra’s, 
but de cornin’ off kin’, dat ’twan’t so easy makin’ out, 
an’ de writin’ not too cl’ar, s ’cause ’twan’t ’Merican 
writin’ — ” 

“ For us ? A foreign letter ? ” cried Maizie, cutting 
short Ceescy’s high delight in her own prolonged 
verbal wanderings with a swoop that took the letter 
out of Ceescy’s hand and the words out of her mouth. 

“ I should say it had gone around ! And isn’t it 
dirty? But, Rhoda, see! It’s the German postage 
stamp, isn’t it ? ” 

“ Nothing else,” Rhoda confirmed her, with no less 
excitement. 

Maizie tore open the letter, and the other three 
twins gathered around while Ceescy continued to fill 
the doorway, lingering to learn the mystery of the 
defaced letter, less from curiosity than from genuine 
interest in the family which she had adopted. 

“Oh, horrors, it’s written in German!” cried Tai- 
zie, frantic at being baffled when her eyes rested on 
the first, utterly incomprehensible page of the letter. 


THE HERR DOKTOR 291 

“ You can read it, Rhoda; please hurry! ” implored 
Hazie. , 

“ I can read printed German fast enough, but writ- 
ten German goes slower,” said Rhoda taking the thin 
sheets and sitting down to her task. “ It is especially 
fine writing, and illegible, and this transparent paper 
caps the climax,” she added, frowning and diving into 
the reading. 

Rhoda read, translating as she went along. The 
German idioms and verbs at the end of the sentences 
made a funny jumble, for Rhoda was in too great 
haste to reach the meaning to take time to do herself 
credit as a translator. 

The formal letter told “ the gracious fraiileins ” that 
its writer was sensible of the compliment implied by 
the request to him to cross the ocean to examine and, 
if possible, to cure the great physician whose eyes had 
been injured, in an accidental explosion. They would 
see, he said, that it was impossible to give an opinion 
on the likelihood of his success. They would also see 
that it would be a great deal to ask that so great an 
oculist as the writer should go so far, merely to give 
an opinion. On the other hand, he had been much 
moved by the letter so naively asking him to do this 
impossible thing. The sketch it outlined of the gra- 
cious fraiileins’ love and gratitude for their great 
doctor and kind friend touched him. “ We Germans,” 
he said, “ are profoundly sentimental; for a sentiment 


292 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


we would make tremendous sacrifices.” Therefore, 
and since he had long desired to visit the United 
States, he might consent to take the trip and, if pos- 
sible, help the afflicted “ Amerikanisch doktor.” He 
would make the long-contemplated journey one of 
duty, not mere pleasure, and undertake it speedily, if 
the gracious fraiileins would assure him of not — too 
great a loss. Whereupon he mentioned the sum for 
which he would gratify his desire to see the United 
States and respond to the call of sentiment on behalf 
of Doctor Porter. It was a sum so great that the 
double twins gasped and looked at each other, amazed 
and crestfallen. 

“ Sell the car and turn off everybody but Ceescy,” 
said Taizie, first to rally, as usual, from the shocked 
silence that had fallen upon them. 

“ Mortgage the palace,” said Daisy. 

“ Sell the palace,” amended Hazie. 

“ We can’t do anything that Doctor Porter would 
know about. He’d be angry — well, perhaps not 
angry, but he wouldn’t like us to raise money to get 
a doctor over here to see him and he’d stop it, if he 
knew it in time, or pay us back if it was too late. We 
can get along and save up enough to pay these debts, 
if we try. It would take a big slice out of Doctor 
Porter’s money, I’m pretty sure, and if it turned out 
to be all for nothing, we ought to pay for risking it. 
All Chagford says that Doctor Porter is only com- 


THE HERR DOKTOR 


293 


fortably well off, because he’s done such an awful lot 
of charity practice. The only thing I see for us to 
do is to go down to the bank and talk to that nice old 
president of it, and see if we can’t get him to take a 
mortgage on the palace and nobody know one thing 
about it.” Maizie’s expression as she spoke was both 
anxious and hopeful. 

“ Rhoda doesn’t say anything?” hinted Daisy. 

“ What can Rhoda say, dear girls ? ” said Rhoda 
looking troubled. “ I know that a great many people 
would blame me for not doing my utmost to prevent 
your undertaking this. Debt is never right, but, on 
the other hand, it is sure to be paid, though it might 
be at a loss to you. There’s where my puzzle comes ; 
I owe you first consideration. But I feel just as you 
do about doing this for that dear family, every one 
of which does so much for us all, for all Chagford. 
And I’m not sure, dear twins, even if it came to money 
loss for you in the end, that your gain in greater ways 
would not outweigh it. Character means so much 
more than money. You have been poor, and then 
carelessly rich; perhaps you will grow richer by far, 
in lasting riches, if you have to economize in order 
to serve others. I’m afraid to advise, because I’m 
hampered by responsibility to you. The majority of 
people would blame me for not trying to check you, 
but I want your highest good — as well as the dear 
Porters’ — and I believe that often the truest wisdom, 


294 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


the wisdom of other worldliness, is called folly by this 
world, but in the end proves itself the way to the most 
lasting good.” 

“ You dear old Rhoda ! ” cried Maizie, getting up 
to hug Rhoda. “Don’t look so bothered! You 
couldn’t stop us, so whatever happens it won’t be your 
fault. We’re not asking for advice about doing this, 
only about how to get at it.” 

Rhoda laughed. “ Then I may as well say I ap- 
prove it, because that’s what I want to say. What- 
ever happens you can’t actually suffer.” 

“ I’d like to know what else you said before but 
that you approved it ! ” cried Hazie. “ What do you 
think of Maizie’s idea?” 

“ I think it’s utterly unbusinesslike and improbable, 
but that the whole thing is so out of line with practical 
sense and common experience, that perhaps it can be 
brought about by unlikely means. Try it; you can 
but fail,” said Rhoda. 

The double twins, therefore, found themselves later 
in the day timorously sitting in the office of the grey- 
haired old president of the Chagford bank, regarding 
him anxiously as they waited his verdict on the story 
and the request for a large loan which they had poured 
out. 

Old Mr. Dillingham looked at them steadily from 
under bushy white eyebrows, his lips pursed up, his 
face blank, his eyes turning from one to the other 


THE HERR DOKTOR 295 

fresh young face before him, each an apparently exact 
reproduction of the other, all wearing the same ex- 
pression of eagerly tense appeal. 

“ H’m,” observed Mr. Dillingham, after what 
seemed to the girls an interminable silence. “ Ha ! ” 
he added. “ Have you considered, my dears, that this 
would curtail your pleasures for many a day, that you 
could no longer gratify your whims, dress, go, eat as 
you pleased? Or else, if you were not strong-willed 
enough to go through it thus, would wipe out your 
home and leave you far worse off than you are to- 
day?” 

“Yes, sir,” cried Maizie eagerly. “We realize 
exactly what it means. What do we care ? Rhoda — 
Miss Drummond — who looks after us, has told us 
what it means. But, goodness gracious, we can afford 
to be hard up a while; we were poor as a pudding 
stone rock before we got to be granddaughters ! 
What we can’t afford is not to have Doctor Porter 
see, if there’s a chance for him to get cured.” 

The old gentleman brought his hand down on his 
knee with a resounding smack. His eyes shot warm 
approval from those bushy jungles which hid them, 
and he laughed aloud. 

“ Gallantly spoken, Maizie Coggs ! ” he cried. 
“ What a soldier you’d have made ! But there are 
many fields fought and won where more courage is 
displayed than under gun fire, and I’ll be blessed if 


296 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

I don’t think women win more such battles than men ! 
Now, look ye here, young twin ladies, this is a Na- 
tional Bank and we can’t hold mortgages, it’s forbid- 
den us. Don’t look so crestfallen; always wait for 
your sentence after you’ve been convicted; don’t an- 
ticipate the judge! The bank can’t loan you on your 
mortgage, but I can and I will. Once, when I was in 
the kind of trouble that slays, Doctor Porter pulled 
me out and all his life I’ve known him for the whitest 
man I’ve ever seen. And I like loyal love and grati- 
tude, which is surely the rarest of human virtues. I 
take off my hat to you, plucky little enthusiasts, and 
I congratulate you on knowing how to love your 
friends, which is not as common a talent, either, as 
it is supposed to be; so for your own sake, and the 
sake of the fine folly you plan, and for Mark Porter’s 
sake, I’ll loan you what you want and take a mort- 
gage for it at four per cent. I won’t have legal inter- 
est on a loan that borders too close on illegality — at 
least it’s infinitely beyond the law of daily experience.” 

“ Oh, Mr. Dillingham ! ” cried Hazie, and, to her 
own dismay, burst out crying. 

“ It’s because we’re so glad,” Taizie needlessly ex- 
plained, her voice shaking. 

Maizie arose and held out her hands, both of them, 
impetuously, yet with dignity. 

For once the harum-scarum Coggs twin bore her- 
self like a princess. 


THE HERR DOKTOR 


297 


“We can’t thank you, Mr. Dillingham,” she said. 
“ But it doesn’t need thanks ; it thanks for itself. 
One thing, please: Promise us you won’t let a living 
soul know about it. We’re going to get the German 
doctor to promise not to tell that we had anything to 
do with his coming to America. He’ll just seem to 
be here and that we heard about him and got him to 
come up to Chagford. That much Doctor Porter’ll 
have to know, but not that we had anything to do 
with his coming from Germany. Then, if it’s all for 
nothing, it won’t seem so much matter, and if he could 
cure our doctor — why, it isn’t nice to be made a fuss 
over, is it ? ” 

“ Not at all,” returned Mr. Dillingham with a quiz- 
zical look. “ Nobody likes to be praised, let alone 
thanked.” 

Maizie laughed. “ Honest, I hate a fuss, as if you 
thought you were some,” she said, embarrassed and 
losing her dignity as she relapsed into her old speech. 
“ Besides, Doctor Porter would pitch in to pay us 
back, and that sure would be awful.” 

“ I will keep silence, my dear, at least for a while,” 
said Mr. Dillingham. “ I will give you a certificate of 
the money which your German is to receive when he 
presents it in person. No reason why you should pay 
in advance, but he must be guaranteed, obviously. 
Wait till I draw up a paper for you to mail him. 
What’s his name ? ” 


298 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ The Herr Doktor Hermann von Schwartzenwald- 
Sussenluft,” Maizie carefully read this name from a 
slip of paper which she took out of her pocket-book. 
“ Rhoda practised me on it, but I don’t believe I could 
have said it, if I hadn’t been used to buying things in 
a German delicatessen in New York, when we were 
little girls.” 

“ And what we’ll call him, goodness knows,” added 
Taizie. “ We’d only begin that name when we met 
him and finish saying it when he sailed back to Ger- 
many.” 

“ Seems to be an outdoors name, Blackforest- 
Sweetair. Call him Doctor Sweetair, only two sylla- 
bles, and hints of pleasantness,” suggested Mr. Dil- 
lingham, rapidly filling out a certificate of deposit for 
this stranger, conditional upon his presenting it in 
person. 

The old gentleman arose and handed the paper to 
Maizie. Then he shook hands warmly with the four 
girls and held the door of his office open for them to 
pass through it, his old-fashioned ceremonial manner 
modified by a farewell pat on each twin’s shoulder, 
conveying his cordial liking and sympathy. 

Taizie, driving the car herself that day, sent it home 
at a rate nearer the speed limit than they usually 
came. 

Rhoda, impatiently marching the piazza in her coat 
and cap, knew before they had turned in at the gate 


THE HERR DOKTOR 299 

that the double twins had been successful on their 
errand. Now that it was accomplished, Rhoda felt 
a sudden terror that she had not prevented the double 
twins from assuming this risk. She could not share 
their joy as she had expected to when she went with 
them into the house to frame the letter which should 
summon Doctor von Schwartzenwald-Sussenluft and 
enclose to him the pledge for which the double twins’ 
home should be involved. 

The letter was dispatched, and, once more, the 
double twins’ life became one concentrated waiting 
for news from Germany. 

It came within eight days in the form of a cable- 
gram. 

“ Sail from Hamburg Tuesday,” it read; it was 
dated Sunday. 

The double twins began to watch the shipping news 
from that moment; they ordered a New York daily 
paper in order to watch for the chronicle that the great 
ship, bringing the German oculist to the United States, 
was “ spoken.” 

She arrived in port duly, and a few hours later the 
Coggs girls received a telegram from one of the 
smaller New York hotels saying that the doctor had 
arrived and would go to Boston, thence to Chagford, 
on the second day after this message was sent. 

“ He’s good and prompt,” said Daisy excitedly. 
“ We must notify Mrs. Halleck at the inn when to 


300 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

expect him. You see, he’s picked out a quiet, small 
hotel in New York, so we were right not to engage 
a place for him at the Somerset Arms, but to send him 
to the Chagford Inn. It really is nicer, though it 
doesn’t make a bit of show.” 

“ Rick’s cousin Bianca is a genuine countess and 
she liked the Chagford Inn heaps,” Hazie reminded 
her. “ Do you suppose he speaks English ? ” 

“ No, I do not Maizie said emphatically. “ But 
none of us has supposed he did any of the dozens of 
times you have asked that, Haze.” 

“ I’m sure I wish he did,” groaned Hazie. “ Yaw 
and nein are about our limit, and we’d have no mortal 
idea of when to use which.” 

“ I’ve been studying German,” said Taizie, with a 
fine air of careless superiority. “ Lieben Sie der 
Hundf Yaw, aber ich Hebe auch die Katze und der 
Pferd. Du bist fericht, mein Kind . That last is a 
quotation from a song,” Taizie kindly explained. “ I 
shall probably introduce the German remarks I’ve 
learned to say to the doctor by asking him: Waren 
Sie krankheit am Meer?” 

“ Oh, Taizie, you absurd girl!” Rhoda said, as 
they all laughed. “ Your primer questions are all 
right, except as to value, but ' Waren Sie krank- 
heit! ' " 

“ That question I composed by looking out the 
words in the dictionary; the others were ready made 


THE HERR DOKTOR 301 

in the First German Lesson Book/’ announced Taizie 
with a great assumption of modest dignity. 

“ How on earth shall we talk to the doctor, really? ” 
cried Daisy. “ Rhoda, you must try; you know. 
German; you read it.” 

“ Reading it, when somebody else is responsible for 
getting the cases and genders of the nouns and the 
article right, and the verbs in their right places, both 
ends of the verbs that have to be separated, and doing 
it oneself are different,” said Rhoda. “ I fancy the 
doctor will have an interpreter, if not, I’ll try, but 
it would have to be a failure if I tried much.” 

“ Well, that’s bad enough, but if we get the two doc- 
tors together, one will be examined and the other do 
the work without much English talking,” said Maizie. 
“ What worries me is not how to talk to Doctor 
Sweetair, but how to talk to Doctor Porter. I wish 
he had been told.” 

“ If he had been told about this doctor before he 
had arrived Doctor Porter would know we had been 
in the secret of his coming,” said Daisy. 

“ Of course. I meant I wish it were done and over 
with,” sighed Maizie. 

Two days later the four Coggs girls, with Rhoda 
Drummond, repaired to the Chagford Inn to call upon 
the famous German oculist. 

He came down to the low-ceiled inn reception-room 
and seemed to fill it up. It was a long room and the 


302 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


doctor was not an excessively large man, yet he pro- 
duced an effect of bulk and of force that filled space. 

He bowed low and bowed repeatedly in response to 
the slowly uttered sentences of welcome which Maizie 
uttered on behalf of the quartette. 

“Vait!” he said, shaking his head. He pressed 
a button in the wall impatiently. 

“ Say for me : Hurry ! ” he said when a little serv- 
ant girl appeared. 

The six people in the inn parlor waited awkwardly 
for whomever had been bidden to hurry. The double 
twins and Rhoda rightly guessed that it was an inter- 
preter. Rhoda felt no temptation to offer to usurp 
the office. 

When the interpreter appeared he proved to be a 
young man, a very young man, of not more than nine- 
teen, with high color, bright blue eyes, a pleasant face, 
a booming rich voice and a laugh that was infectious. 

“ My sohn,” the doctor introduced him, with a 
comprehensive wave toward the five young ladies 
before him whose identity he had not guessed, had he 
possessed the English to explain it. 

But the son — Kurt Sweetair, he called himself, 
accepting enthusiastically the modified translation of 
his name — spoke English fluently, better than the 
double twins, if truth were told. He explained that 
this was because he had an English mother. 

“Now that’s fine; we had an English father, so 


THE HERR DOKTOR 


303 


you’re not a foreigner any more! ” cried Taizie, issu- 
ing naturalization papers with a speed that Uncle 
Sam would never dare emulate. 

The twins’ explanation of the situation, that Doctor 
Porter had not been told of Doctor Sweetair’s com- 
ing and why, was heard with interest by Kurt and 
repeated to his father in German that seemed to the 
double twins little short of miraculous from one who 
spoke English like a native. 

Rhoda, watching with amused interest, saw Doctor 
Sweetair melt to his youthful new acquaintances and 
regard them with kindly humor in his German blue 
eyes, as their simplicity unconsciously revealed a 
great deal that they had not meant to say. 

The introductory visit ended^ with a conditional ap- 
pointment to visit Doctor Porter the following morn- 
ing at eleven, the condition being dependent upon the 
double twins’ ability to arrange for the meeting. 

Kurt Sweetair put them into their car. Rhoda 
thought that he seemed bewildered by the unusual 
characteristics of these, his first American girl ac- 
quaintances. But she saw that he was also greatly 
charmed by them. It would have been duller eyes 
than Kurt Sweetair’s keen ones which did not see that 
the double twins were wholesome, upright, kind, fine 
girls. If he had added “ and lovable ones,” he would 
not have been mistaken, though it was at first sight 
of them. 


CHAPTER XVI 

SECOND SIGHT 

HE double twins could scarcely eat 
any of the tempting supper that 
Ceescy prepared for them that night. 
Excitement, the desire to settle the 
doubt of Doctor Porter’s consenting 
to let Doctor Sweetair examine his eyes, made eating 
impossible. 

It was only a few minutes after seven when Taizie 
sent out word to Elijah that they were ready to be 
taken down to Doctor Porter’s, and they were at the 
Porter door when Mrs. Porter’s little desk clock 
struck half past seven. 

“ Why, dear Double Twins, what is the reason for 
your perturbation? ” asked the doctor, after the quar- 
tette had stammeringly gone through their salutations. 
“ Even sightless I can see that you are disturbed. 
Nothing wrong, is there ? ” 

The other three looked at Maizie. Compelled to 
reply by her customary office of spokeswoman, Maizie 
flushed scarlet and said : 



304 


SECOND SIGHT 


305 


“ Perhaps there’s something- awful right. It’s up 
to you, Doctor Porter, to make it right or wrong.” 

“Well, if that wasn’t a relapse, Maizie!” laughed 
Nancy who, having her bright eyes to enlighten her, 
as well as her ears, saw what her father could not see, 
that the perturbation in the double twins’ voices and 
manner did not indicate trouble. “ Rhoda will get 
a fine for her jar! For the Slang-and-Grammar Slip 
jar, you know.” 

“ It doesn’t catch near half the fines it used to get; 
it needs a nickel,” retorted Maizie. “ Doctor Porter, 
wouldn’t you want — not be willing, but want — to 
do something easy that would make us happy? ” 

“ My lawyer has forbidden my answering questions 
which might incriminate myself,” said Doctor Porter. 
“ Beating around the bush is not a Coggs trait, Mis- 
tress Mary ; quite the contrary ! Whatever you want, 
tell me, and I’ll gratify your desires within reason.” 

“ Wouldn’t you see a great German oculist, just to 
let him see if — if anything could be done? ” Maizie 
blurted out, in a contrasting rush of words. 

“Go to Germany, do you mean?” asked Doctor 
Porter surprised. 

“No, oh, no; it’s so easy!” Taizie took up the 
thread of pleading. “ He’s here, in Chagford.” 

“ He’s seeing the United States,” Hazie interposed 
hastily, so hastily that it aroused the doctor’s suspi- 
cions, and Mrs. Porter and Nancy exchanged glances. 


306 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

“ Seeing the United States? Well, much as we love 
Chagford, and know it to be worth seeing, it does not 
seem a likely place for a tourist to step aside to see. 
When did he come ? Who is he ? ” 

“ He came last night, no, yesterday afternoon. 
Maybe you’ve heard of him — Doctor Sweetair?” 
Daisy joined in the explanation. 

The doctor shook his head. “ Sweetair? No. 
That isn’t a German name — Oh! You couldn’t 
mean Siissenluft? Doctor Hermann von Schwartzen- 
wald-Sussenluft? ” 

“ Yes, I could! We do,” cried Taizie. “ They say 
he’s the greatest oculist in the world. And he’s here. 
Won’t you see him? ” 

“ Since when have you double twins developed this 
amazing knowledge of European specialists?” asked 
Doctor Porter. 

Already Nancy’s fingers were fluttering in and out 
of one another as she twisted them, and her mother 
was leaning forward in her chair, with parted lips, 
drinking in the suggestion that any one might help 
her husband. 

“We haven’t,” said Hazie. “ But we heard that 
this Doctor Sweetair could cure almost any eye 
trouble.” She did not realize that she had betrayed 
to the keen audience listening to her that their sus- 
picions of the double twins’ having a hand in the great 
doctor’s coming were well founded. 


SECOND SIGHT 


307 


“We translated his name; we couldn’t say all that 
other. He has the nicest son ! Speaks English as well 
as any one ; his mother was English. He travels with 
his father to translate what he says. Wouldn’t you 
like to see this doctor, Doctor Porter? ” 

“ My dear, I should like to see any one ! ” said Doc- 
tor Porter with the twist of his lips which, before his 
affliction, accompanied the twinkle in his eyes. “ Of 
course this specialist’s opinion would be a Supreme 
Court decision on my case. But perhaps — more 
than probably — he would not take up practice when 
he is travelling for pleasure.” 

Quick-witted as she was, Maizie betrayed herself. 
“ Yes, he would ! ” she cried. “ He — we went to 
see him yesterday to ask him, before we spoke to you, 
and he said he would come here to-morrow at eleven, 
if you would let him.” 

“ Oh, Mark, dear, pray don’t hesitate ! ” cried Mrs. 
Porter. 

“ Oh, father, my daddy, let him come I ” cried 
Nancy at the same instant. 

Doctor Porter arose, holding out accusing, grateful 
hands to the twins. 

“ Children,” he said, “ there is more in this than 
you are telling us. Why did this doctor come to 
Chagford? Perhaps it is also: Why did he come to 
the United States? How did you know of him? 
How did you happen to go to him before coming to 


308 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


me to arrange a meeting between us ? Some day these 
questions must be answered. You have plotted; I 
think you have done more than that! But, for the 
present, it shall rest on your success. I will gladly let 
Doctor Schwartzenwald-Siissenluft examine my eyes. 
Sometimes I have myself wondered if there were a 
possibility of relief, not cure — modified blindness. 
I’m not going to thank you; not now. Are you to 
report to the doctor, or shall my secretary write him ? ” 
He laid his hand on Nancy’s shoulder and she felt it 
tremble ; the “ secretary ” herself quivered under the 
least hope of her father’s cure. 

“ We’ll stop on our way home. We must go this 
minute; it gets dark pretty early, still,” said Maizie. 
“ The doctor is stopping at Chagford Inn ; we forgot 
to say.” 

The double twins went quietly out of the room, 
subdued by the triumph of an easy victory and pro- 
foundly stirred by the faint hope it held. 

Mrs. Porter followed them and put them into the 
car. No one spoke, but the good night kiss which 
Mrs. Porter gave each glowing cheek was eloquent. 

The next day Rick went down to the Chagford Inn 
to meet Doctor Sweetair and his son and take them to 
Doctor Porter. This was the arrangement that had 
been made over the telephone by the Coggs girls after 
they had reached home, having seen Doctor Porter. 

Rick and the doctor’s son were so nearly of an age 


SECOND SIGHT 


309 


that they fell into easy comradeship, while the doctor 
walked silently with them, isolated by his mother 
tongue, possibly regretting that he had obstinately re- 
sisted his English wife’s long pleading with him to 
master hers. 

Kurt Sweetair understood Rick’s mood that morn- 
ing after Rick had told him that no son could love a 
father more than he loved Doctor Porter. 

“ And few sons’ love is so justified,” Rick added. 
“ There’s but one Doctor Porter in this world of all 
sorts ! Even though there may be a Doctor Sweetair, 
as we’re going to call you.” 

“ Nice name, I’d be glad to use it permanently,” said 
Kurt. “ My father has made me knock about this 
world considerable, for a young chap; he believes in 
putting self-reliance into a boy as early as he can re- 
ceive it. So I’ve seen a good deal of men’s sons, and 
I know you and I are lucky to respect our fathers. It 
must be a fine thing to know one’s son looks up to 
one, but it’s bigger yet to be that son and see your 
father as great as you thought him when you about 
reached to his knee. By George, Mr. Lovering, it’s 
all true that they tell us: Character is the thing! ” 

“ Surest thing there is ! ” cried Rick. “ But I’d 
rather you called me Rick, as all the rest do. In 
Chagford we keep boyish simplicity of manners a 
good while.” 

“ Rather nice, too, unless there’s somebody you 


310 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


want to freeze up,” laughed Kurt. “ Rick it is, then, 
provided I’m Kurt. Awfully nice to get so at home 
in a strange land! I’ve taken marvellously to this 
quiet town of yours; rather like an English place, only 
the houses are newer.” 

“ And yet we pride ourselves on being ‘ old Chag- 
ford ! ’ ” said Rick. “ There’s a blockhouse still 
standing where the settlers used to take refuge from 
the Indians.” 

“ Really ? But in England the savage neighbors 
have been so long one with the Danes, Saxons, Ro- 
mans and Normans that there’s no trace left of feuds.” 

So saying Kurt smiled and clapped his hand on 
Rick’s shoulder. Rick knew that his own smile was 
forced. His face felt drawn ; he understood that Kurt 
was entering into the anxiety with which he looked 
forward to Doctor Sweetair’s verdict. 

They came into the Porter house to find Mrs. Porter 
awaiting them. Her madonna type of beauty, the 
motherly look that was its most striking characteristic, 
instantly appealed to the big German, whose ideal 
woman was essentially a homemaker. Unconsciously 
Mrs. Porter looked at him imploringly as she gave 
him her hand. 

“ Madam, I will my best do,” he said, and the few 
English words were an attempt complimentary to her. 

Doctor Porter and Nancy were waiting in Nancy’s 
beautiful new room. 


SECOND SIGHT 311 

When Doctor Sweetair saw Doctor Porter and his 
slender “ assistant,” when he saw the look on Nancy’s 
pale face, the adoration in her earnest eyes as she 
turned from the strangers to look up into her father’s 
sightless ones, the famous specialist was completely 
conquered. 

“ I’m truly glad to meet you and I fully appreciate 
your coming to me, Herr Doctor. I regret that my 
German parted from me at the college door, except 
a reading familiarity. I should like to tell you in your 
own tongue how well I know what you have done in 
your profession,” said Doctor Porter heartily. 

Doctor Sweetair looked appraisingly into the Chag- 
ford doctor’s face and saw in him the quality of true 
greatness. 

“ I hope to do more, here,” he boomed in his throaty 
bass which Kurt translated. 

Then the two doctors departed together, leaving 
Mrs. Porter and Nancy to wait the result of an ex- 
amination which the German specialist was to make at 
once. When they returned Mrs. Porter leaned for- 
ward, listening, then she started to her feet. 

“ They are hurrying, Nancy; your father would 
not hurry to bring us bad news,” she cried. 

There had been no pretence of conversation while 
mother and daughter waited; Kurt and Rick merely 
bore them company quietly, Rick with his arm around 
Mrs. Porter’s shoulder, sonlike in attitude and anxiety. 


312 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Now Rick leaped to meet Doctor Porter, but 
checked himself to allow Mrs. Porter and Nancy to 
precede him. 

Doctor Porter held out both hands and Nancy ran 
between them into his arms, as Mrs. Porter seized the 
outstretched hands. 

“ Mark ? ” she interrogated on a breath. 

“Mildred, Nancy, Rick — where’s Richie? — 
there’s a chance ! ” cried the doctor. “ It isn’t more 
than that, and it doesn’t include a cure, but there’s a 
chance of relief, partial cure. If it were ever so small 
a part, one eye restored, and even that not wholly, but 
so I could see you again, my dear ones, oh, my 
dears — ” 

The doctor stopped short, and Nancy burrowed into 
his coat lapel with a sob. Mrs. Porter made no sound, 
but she laid her hands over the doctor’s eyes and their 
clinging touch was a prayer for his healing. 

“ May we hear just what the doctor thinks the 
trouble is and what is the chance of curing it, sir ? ” 
asked Rick, after a moment’s silence. 

“ If I were to tell you scientifically I’m afraid you 
would be no wiser,” said Doctor Porter. “ I’ve scant 
faith in your memories of the anatomy you learned in 
school.” 

“ But we don’t want to know science, M. D., my 
daddy,” said Nancy. “We want to know its results ; 
about you, that’s all.” 


SECOND SIGHT 


313 


“ Exactly. Is Doctor Sweetair’s son here? You 
are to stay to lunch ; your father is returning to lunch 
with us — right, Mildred? I thought Kurt Sweetair 
was making a move to go. Now, to resume Doctor 
Sweetair’s diagnosis,” Doctor Porter said, crossing to 
a chair upon the arm of which Nancy instantly 
perched. 

“ The oculists who examined my eyes in Boston 
did so immediately after the explosion, you know. 
This great German thinks there was a mistake made, 
owing to a part of the eye, which should be trans- 
parent, having become opaque. Doctor Sweetair feels 
sure that a minute bit of glass entered the eye, went 
through the cornea, imbedded itself in one of the rear 
chambers of the eye, rendered it opaque, preventing an 
accurate diagnosis, caused an abscess in behind the 
outer eye — you see how nicely I avoid terms which 
I really know professionally ! — and made me blind. 
Doctor Sweetair believes that an operation, delicate, 
but not dangerous, would restore partial sight to the 
eye. You see I say: Eye, not eyes. There is no 
chance whatever for the left one; the sight of that 
one is totally destroyed, but there may be a little light 
and vision let into the retina of the right eye. That 
is his verdict.” 

“ It isn’t much,” sighed Nancy disappointed. 

“ But it is something,” cried her mother quickly. 

“ Surely it is,” agreed the doctor. “ I feel that the 


314 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


operation is worth essaying, though the eye may never 
let me read a book again, if it will show me sunshine, 
grass, flowers, starlight and moonlight — and your 
faces.” 

“ Oh, daddy dearest, yes, yes, of course it is ! ” cried 
Nancy. “ I didn’t mean to speak as though it weren’t 
much. I couldn’t help wanting all, but that would be 
a lot.” 

Mrs. Porter did not say anything. Eloquently 
silent she sat, lightly touching the back of her hus- 
band’s hand as if he had been a child. 

“ When will it be, the operation, Mark? ” she asked 
at last. 

“ The day after to-morrow. I shall be the first 
surgical patient in our new hospital. Don’t you think 
that is suitable, since I suppose there’s no doubt I have 
been its chief instigator and they have made me its 
head and named it St. Mark’s, indirectly in my 
honor? ” The doctor turned to Kurt Sweetair as he 
spoke, smiling happily. 

“ We must telephone the twins!” cried Nancy. 
“ How could we forget? We promised to let them 
know the moment we knew ourselves what Doctor 
Sweetair said.” 

“ And I must go to see if there is anything to give 
two Teutonic pilgrims for their lunch,” added Mrs. 
Porter. “If you find lenten fare, be charitable to a 
perturbed hostess, Mr. Sweetair.” 


SECOND SIGHT 


315 


“ Kurt/’ the young man corrected her. “ A hostess 
who is imposed upon, rather. It’s a shame to spring 
two big hungry creatures like father and me upon 
you, without warning. At least I had no hand in it; 
the two doctors did it.” 

Nancy paused on her way to the telephone. “ Why, 
who interpreted for you while you were gone? Doc- 
tor Sweetair’s son was here ! ” she cried. 

Doctor Porter looked guilty. “ I made an at- 
tempt at German again, and well, we pieced out with 
medical Latin! We weren’t enjoying social inter- 
course,” he explained. 

Nancy announced the verdict to the double twins 
over the wire. They received it dubiously, hardly 
knowing whether to rejoice more over its not being 
completely adverse, or to regret more that the best 
that could happen to Doctor Porter was a partial re- 
covery of sight. 

The next afternoon Doctor Porter made ready to go 
to the hospital. 

The double twins begged to be allowed to come 
after him in their car and drive him to St. Mark’s. 
But Nancy would not allow this. 

“ Tonic and I are going to take him there, in the 
old surrey,” she declared, “ as we always take him, 
wherever he goes. You may be polite to the Sweet- 
airs, senior and junior, drive the German doctor to 
St. Mark’s, but not the Yankee one.” 


316 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

“ Hazie is very polite to the junior Sweetair,” ob- 
served Daisy significantly. 

“ Boomerang,” declared Hazie nonchalantly, 
though her color mounted. “ Boomerang politeness, 
I mean — he’s just as polite to me, back again. Any- 
way, you couldn’t be impolite to a young man who 
came out from Germany for no harm at all, just to 
interpret for his father.” 

“ ‘ I love little pussy, her coat is so warm 

And if I don’t hurt her she’ll do me no harm,’ ” 

sang Taizie. 

“ However, we all think the junior Sweetair is not 
merely a harmless young man; he’s a decidedly nice 
young man, about the nicest there is.” 

“ Except Tommy Giddings and Rick,” said Maizie 
quietly. 

Mrs. Porter put into his suitcase the things that 
Doctor Porter needed, not many, because he was not 
going far; St. Mark’s was almost like an extension 
of the Porter house, the doctor being its head physi- 
cian, visiting it daily. 

Nancy waited her father’s coming at the gate, his 
strapped suitcase already in the old surrey, Letty 
Hetty, Stephen, Bumblebee, Funny, Flip and Fred 
all at the gate to see their start. Nothing of impor- 
tance happened in the Porter household that Letty 
Hetty and Stephen, so long its devoted servitors 


SECOND SIGHT 


317 


and friends, did not share. The three cats and 
Nancy’s dog were likely, also, to add themselves to 
family groups, apparently conscious of electrical con- 
ditions. 

The doctor came out without guidance and got into 
the surrey as quickly as he could. He waved his hand 
carelessly to the little group, the human part of which 
prayed in their hearts as they called out a cheerful 
good-by. 

“ I’ll be gone something less than a month, perhaps 
decidedly less, and then I hope I may come back to 
see you all,” he said. 

He turned his face toward the house knowing that 
his wife was hidden behind the curtains in the room 
where he had left her. 

Tonic took his master to St. Mark’s at a reminis- 
cence of his youthful pace. They passed the double 
twins returning in their car, and knew that they had 
left Doctor Sweetair at the hospital. 

“ Look after the household and your mother, Doc- 
torette,” said Doctor Porter. “ Rick is up here; I’ll 
send him home presently. Good-by, Dame Trot. 
Nothing to worry over, in any case, you know; some- 
thing to hope over, that’s all. Good-by.” 

Nancy could not say the little word. Silently she 
turned old Tonic homeward, and if ever there were 
prayer wheels turned in India by suppliant hands then 
the wheels of the old surrey were prayer wheels, too, 


318 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


for every inch of her slow drive homeward Nancy 
implored Heaven for her father’s sight. 

The operation was performed the next morning at 
half past nine. The skilful hands of the great Ger- 
man oculist, big, yet deft and delicately sure, took 
Doctor Porter’s eye from its socket, made the swift, 
marvellous strokes with the knife that might remove 
its barrier to the light and replaced it — one of the 
wonderful acts of modern surgery. 

Then the bandages were put into place, and Doctor 
Porter was left in the hands of the nurse to recover 
from the anaesthetic. It was over. Only a few mo- 
ments’ work, but for these few moments the great 
doctor had crossed the Atlantic and their fruit might 
be that the blind should see. 

Not for several days could the result of the opera- 
tion be known. Doctor Sweetair lingered in Chag- 
ford to see the end of his work. He seemed contented 
and to take kindly to the life of this quaint old town 
in which, among its old families, something of the 
simple, refined dignity of the early days of the Re- 
public still prevailed. 

Kurt was happier there than his father. He had 
grown enthusiastic over all things American. Mrs. 
Porter and Nancy wondered if it were possible that 
he were seriously attracted by one of the double twins, 
and, as Nancy said, “if he were, how he knew which 
one it was that attracted him.” 


SECOND SIGHT 


319 


All Chagford poured out proofs of affectionate 
gratitude upon Doctor Porter during these hospital 
days. His room would have been carpeted and 
papered and furnished with flowers, if he could have 
borne so much of their fragrance, and the delicacies 
that were sent for him to eat, “because,” as every- 
body pleaded, “ an operation on the eye did not pro- 
hibit jelly, ” were enough to have supplied all the 
patients in the hospital, if every bed, in every ward, 
were filled. 

Ten days after the operation Doctor Sweetair began 
to hint of strong hope that it had been at least a par- 
tial success. Doctor Porter began to receive his 
friends, Nancy came and read to him for hours; the 
girls who had grown up with her, so much of the 
time' under the doctor’s roof, who adored him, Mimi, 
Doris, Cord, Amabel Willis, came to amuse him with 
their lively chatter. 

Rick hung about the hospital all day, of course Mrs. 
Porter gave up all thought of anything else and spent 
her days with her husband. 

But the double twins were the most manifestly at- 
tentive of anybody. Back and forth all day long 
Taizie, Maizie or Elijah Riggs drove the long silver 
colored car, from the palace to St. Mark’s, over 
to the Misses Allaire to fetch them to see the doctor 
and home again, down into the town on a swift 
errand, till, as Elijah said to his brother, Doctor Por- 


320 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


ter’s man, Stephen, “ it really didn’t seem ’sif the 
Coggs wouldn’t leave a road that wa’n’t worn out in 
Chagford, let alone a tire on their wheels.” 

“ Oh, Doctor Sweetair,” cried Nancy one day, meet- 
ing the big German in the hall, “ when shall we 
know ? ” 

Doctor Sweetair understood English better than he 
spoke it, but of late he had actually been making funny 
attempts to speak it, which was the subtlest flattery to 
his American friends. 

“ Tiret, yaw?” he said. “ Vill not batient vaitin 
longer sein? No? So-o! Veil, I dell you, t jess ! Ve 
took ’em off heute, to-day, und see how deine vater’s 
augen go, hein ! ” 

“Oh, mercy!” cried Nancy, shocked by the unex- 
pected answer. 

She ran off as fast as she could to repeat the news 
to her mother and Rick. Then she telephoned the 
Coggs girls, first of all, because the Porters’ suspicions 
grew daily stronger that the double twins had a great, 
unrevealed share in the coming of Doctor Sweetair. 

Then she called up all her mates and the Misses 
Allaire and Grandma Emerson, that those who were 
Doctor Porter’s closest friends and her own might 
share the excitement attending the definite announce- 
ment of the result of the operation. 

Doctor Sweetair went into Doctor Porter’s room 
alone, excluding everybody. 


SECOND SIGHT 


321 


Mrs. Porter, Nancy and Rick waited just outside. 
The double twins had come, of course, bringing the 
Allaire sisters, and Nancy’s girl friends had all come, 
or rather the four she knew and liked best. 

Within the darkened room Doctor Sweetair re- 
moved the bandages and made the final examination 
of Doctor Porter’s eye. 

He turned to the nurse, who was a German. 

“ Tell him,” he said, triumph in his voice, “ that 
the operation is a success. He will see, not with full 
vision, never more than three-quarters sight, but he 
will see once more.” 

The girl started to translate, but Doctor Porter 
interrupted her. 

“ I understood,” he said quietly. “ Thank God. 
Doctof, please keep the rest out for a minute. Call 
my wife and little girl first, alone. I want my re- 
stored vision first to rest on them.” 

“ Natiirlich! Sure,” boomed the German doctor, 
and because he was a German, not in the least ashamed 
of sentiment, he did not mind the tears that dropped 
into his moustache, which curled fiercely upward in 
the most loyal copy of the Kaiser William’s. 

He went out, faced the group of waiting friends 
with a beaming smile. 

“ It iss goot,” he announced. “ He will see, not so 
goot wie a not-hurted eye; ganz gewiss, it iss not 
possibly. Aber he see goot, gut genug. Come, Frau 


322 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Doktor, come, kleine Fraulein Nannchen. Sie must 
die ersten sein, bitte.” 

Doctor Sweetair did not know that he had fallen 
away from his struggle to speak English; he forgot 
all language but the things which Mrs. Porter’s eyes 
and Nancy’s said as they followed him. 

He opened Doctor Porter’s door and pushed them 
in, closed it and mounted an unnecessary guard out- 
side. 

Doctor Porter held out his arms. 

“ This is what I hope to see when I open my eyes 
after death,” he said. “ Mildred, Nancy, I see you, 
I see you ! I am always to see you now l ” 


CHAPTER XVII 


SHEARING THE PALACE 

OCTOR PORTER’S cure, or rather 
his permanent improvement, was an 
established fact. He had been at 
home again for nearly a month. 
Chagford was beginning to get ac- 
customed to its pleasure in seeing him once more 
walking its streets unattended, to nodding and smiling 
to him and receiving a nod and a smile in return with- 
out its being necessary to salute him by a word in 
order to let him hear his neighbor’s voice for his 
identification. 

If all the three Chagfords and everybody in them 
were glad that the doctor had received back again so 
much of what he had lost, the rejoicing was intensified 
in the case of the double twins, partly because they 
loved the doctor better than most, but chiefly because 
they hugged to their hearts the knowledge that to 
them this joy was due. 

But — for like most earthly things there was a 
“ but ” in the thought of it — it was the Coggs girls 
who must pay the penalty of Doctor Porter’s gain. 

323 



324 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

They were more than willing to do this; even sacri- 
fices, if they must be made, they would make gladly 
for the sake of the three Porters, but the question was 
how to do this and not let the Porters suspect that it 
was done. 

“ You see, if we go to cutting out anything now 
the doctor will be right on to us,” said Taizie, so dis- 
consolately that Rhoda did not raise her eyebrows in 
her established danger signal which meant: “’Ware 
Slang i” 

“ We’d feel like cripples without the car, but we 
could get along, only if we sold it now, just after 
Doctor Sweetair was imported, Doctor Porter would 
be wise to us and he’d never in this world let us stand 
thousands, nor hundreds, nor dollars, nor even cents 
for him.” 

“ ’Course not,” said Daisy. “ It’s got to be done 
somehow inside, so it won’t show on the outside.” 

“Well, how?” demanded Maizie, adding with en- 
tire truth: “ The inside is all outside in a little town.” 

“ Couldn’t we just keep on paying interest to Mr. 
Dillingham and shear the palace slowly, so we could 
pay a little off at a time ? ” suggested Daisy. 

“ I don’t think Mr. Dillingham wants to let it drag 
like that,” said Maizie. 

“If we sold the car we’d lose a lot and, what’s 
more than money, we’d lose Elijah. I want Elijah; 
he’s more than a chauffeur, he’s a sure-for-anything- 


SHEARING THE PALACE 325 

we need ! I suppose you girls will laugh, but I never 
have felt so fatherless since we got that nice, care- 
taking, kind, plain-but-hidden gentleman to take us 
around. He’s not like a hired man; he’s like a kind, 
plain farmer you might be boarding with, if you ever 
went boarding on a farm.” Hazie took great, though 
not necessary pains to make her position to Elijah 
Riggs clear. 

“Sure; that’s the way we all feel,” said Taizie. 
“ Couldn’t we keep Elijah? I suppose there wouldn’t 
be any sense in it, if the car went. Nothing would 
be more noticed than selling the car. How about the 
jewelry we have? Maybe we could get some one to 
sell it for us. I suppose we’d be cheated like fun if 
we went to selling diamonds and things.” 

“ Dear Double Twins, even if you did any of these 
things you would still not have discharged the debt,” 
said Rhoda. “ Why not carry all of it, at least long 
enough to see what happens ? ” 

“ Because, Rhoda, we have to pay part of it soon. 
Mr. Dillingham said so,” said Maizie. “ The jewelry 
is our best way. Who’ll we send it to?” 

“Mr. Carberry?” suggested Daisy. 

“ I suppose,” agreed Maizie doubtfully. “ He’s a 
lawyer; I don’t know whether he would know how 
to sell jewelry or not.” 

“ He’d be sharp to see it was a right price; he’d 
probably get some one to tell him. I guess he’d be all 


326 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


right. Let’s go get it together. Maizie must write 
Mr. Carberry. Look out you don’t let him guess 
what’s up; he sure is sharp!” Taizie was on her 
feet, eager to do at once what must be done. 

In the meantime the three Porters were discussing 
their strong suspicion of the double twins’ responsi- 
bility for Doctor Sweetair’s visit to the United States, 
their fear that it was not merely the responsibility of 
the plot, but of its cost that lay at the Coggs’ door. 

“ You know, Mildred and Assistant,” Doctor Por- 
ter said, “ it is quite unbearable to imagine that these 
children are doing such a thing ! It must not be. We 
would rather sacrifice all Nancy’s inheritance, if need 
be, than to allow it, would we not ? ” 

“ Needless to ask, Mark,” said Mrs. Porter. 

“ It wouldn’t be much sacrifice to exchange any 
amount of money for your seeing ever so little,” said 
Nancy. 

“ It will come out, if it is so,” said Doctor Porter. 
“We shall be able to restore the money, but how about 
the generous love, the devotion to us? The dear, 
loyal, loving children! There are debts which are 
never paid. Not in this life.” 

“ Except in kind,” Mrs. Porter reminded him. 
“ The double twins feel that we have all helped them 
to learn and to be, and they know we are fond of 
them. They are so simple and genuine that I think 
they truly reckon only real things; they reckon love, 


SHEARING THE PALACE 


327 


not cost; not material things, but greater ones. I 
wish everybody reckoned that way. After all, what 
we really owe people is the love that prompts an 
action; not the actual, material cost of it. We owe 
that sort of debt for what we buy, where no love is 
involved.” 

“ Well, Mildred, I can’t say I think you have meas- 
ured life by any other standard than the one you like 
in the Coggs twins. In fact I think you have done 
your full share in keeping them unworldly. But we’ll 
square all accounts, if we can, let no one lose through 
us, either in love and gratitude, nor in their purse. 
I wish I could hope that Sweetair would betray them, 
but I know he won’t.” Doctor Porter frowned over 
the problem of how to surprise what he called : “ The 
twins’ guilty secret.” 

Doctor Sweetair certainly did not betray the twins. 
Whatever arrangement had been made between them 
he was going back to Germany with its terms a 
secret. Was there another secret concerning the twins 
and the great doctor, or, rather, Kurt Sweetair? 

Nancy, consumed with justifiable curiosity, hinted 
her desire to be told this, after the Sweetairs, father 
and son, had gone. The double twins, as well as the 
Porters, had been seeing them off at the Chagford 
station, and Nancy had gone home with the Coggs 
girls, all of them pensively quiet, for partings are 
depressing. Hazie was downright melancholy. 


328 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ We want to know, too, Nancy,” Maizie said. 
“ We don’t, though ! Hazie, couldn’t you give us a 
hint — whether Kurt is. too afraid of seasickness to 
cross again, for instance?” 

Hazie smiled, a wan sort of smile, then decided not 
to be sentimental and untwins-like, and laughed. 

“ I guess he’ll risk another ocean voyage, some 
day,” she said. “ Goodness knows, if he eats things 
like sauerkraut and — and all those German funny 
cookings, he ought not to be afraid of seasick- 
ness ! ” 

“ Maybe his home cooking takes after his mother’s 
side, isn’t German, but English,” suggested Taizie. 
“ Hazie, you’re my own special twin ; tell me what 
Kurt said and what you said, and, while you’re telling, 
let the other twins and Nancy hear, because they’re 
positively bursting interested ! ” 

“ Well,” Hazie hesitated, then again made up her 
mind to be her usual frank self, laughed, and began 
with what soon developed into unembarrassed enjoy- 
ment. “ If a boy .thinks he likes a girl, I guess there’s 
no use in arguing with him. I told Kurt he couldn’t 
like me so much, because he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t 
one of the others. But he declared he could tell me 
apart, so — what can you do ? ” 

“ Be told apart! ” cried Nancy. “ What was it he 
told you, Hazie ? ” 

“ I guess they all tell you the same thing,” said 


SHEARING THE PALACE 


329 


Hazie, a great blush losing itself in the rings of bright 
hair that lay damp on her forehead, for the May day 
was warm and she had just taken off her automobile 
bonnet. “ I never had any other boy tell me how nice 
he thought I was, so, of course, I don’t know, but in 
stories it comes out about the same. Kurt said we 
were all four the jolliest girls he’d ever known and 
the nicest, that I was a little the nicest of the Coggs 
bunch, and he wanted me to write to him. He wanted 
me to tell him I liked him better than any one in the 
world, but I told him I didn’t, and what’s more I 
didn’t see how I ever could like a perfect stranger 
better than the girls who’d been twinning and sister- 
ing me ever since I was born. And he said he didn’t 
mind how much I liked the other three-quarters of 
me, but what he wanted was to know that I wouldn’t 
ever like any other boy as much as him. And I told 
him I might just as well try to promise not to catch 
chicken-pox; I liked him now, and I was willing to 
say that I didn’t see how I’d ever like any one else as 
well, because we Coggs were regular Bunker Hill 
monuments for standing still in one place. I wouldn’t 
say one word more, and he had to go off satisfied. I 
guess he’s not so silly but he can see that it isn’t 
always the most sputter that cooks best. No use try- 
ing to make a whole lot of promises for by and by — 
like an almanac, setting down the weather a whole 
year ahead and maybe hitting it and maybe not.” 


330 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ But, Hazie,” interposed Maizie, with the elder 
sisterly air that sat so amusingly on her almost iden- 
tical age and face, differing not a hair’s breadth from 
the others of the Coggs quartette. “ Hazie, is that 
an engagement ? ” 

“ ’Course not ! ” declared Hazie promptly. “ He 
wanted me to promise I’d marry him some day, but 
I told him : Kurt von Schwartzenwald-Siissenluft — 
and that’s a name to stop any one from such a prom- 
ise — Kurt Sweetair, I said, I’m seventeen years old 
and that’s too young to promise anything that lasts 
as long as being married. Besides, you haven’t been 
home yet and seen your mother. You go home. You 
haven’t taken a long distance squint at me, either. 
People look different by long distance, sometimes. 
You go back to Germany and see what you think of 
the Coggs twins when you get there, ’specially Hazie. 
I’ll write you, and I like you a lot, but that’s the very 
most you’ll get me to say, so run along over the gang- 
plank, little Dutch Hans, and we’ll see.” Hazie ended 
her quotation of herself with manifest relish of what 
had been her mastery of the situation. 

The other three girls and Nancy clapped their hands 
and laughed and laughed. 

Nancy saw that Maizie and Daisy were relieved that 
Hazie’s dawning romance remained at dawn. They 
dreaded the nearer approach of romance to any of 
them. 


SHEARING THE PALACE 


331 


Hazie had answered Kurt Sweetair wisely, pru- 
dently, which also pleased them. 

“ It might be worse ! ” sighed Maizie, and they all 
laughed again. 

“ Strange,” said Daisy, glancing sidewise at Taizie, 
“ that the younger pair of twins has been the first to 
get, well, not engaged; thank goodness, you two 
aren’t engaged! But have a sort of a track laid on 
which you may run into getting married some day! 
I don’t trust Taizie and Tommy Giddings one 
bit more than Hazie and Kurt Sweetair; not as 
much ! ” 

“ Tommy and I like each other, we know it. We 
aren’t going to be engaged yet, but we know we shall 
be, and we wouldn’t marry any one else for all the 
wealth of a Poll Condor,” said Taizie calmly. 

The other four girls shouted. “ Oh, Taizie, you 
will be the death of me! ” gasped Nancy, wiping her 
eyes. “ It’s Golconda, the rich mines, you know, not 
a sort of condor-parrot ! ” 

“What’s the dif ? ” inquired Taizie. “Just a way 
of saying big money; it doesn’t mean more one way 
than the other, if you say it hard enough. And, 
just as we happen to be on the subject, Daize, I 
wouldn’t be too sure that jolly young reporter, Des- 
pard Longacre, wouldn’t be a bad bet, if any one 
wanted to bet he wouldn’t try to steal our little Daisy- 
bud ! And he’s got the most dressy name of the three, 


332 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

though it wouldn’t be fair to blame Kurt for his last 
name.” 

Daisy looked uncomfortable ; she minded being 
accused of a possible romance more than the others 
did. 

“ Only poor old Maize left out in this distribution,” 
she said, rallying, “ and she’s the best package in our 
grabbag.” 

"If you all ever should be married I’d have to be 
left out, or there wouldn’t be any Coggs girl, and that 
would certainly be a pity,” said Maizie, with a smile 
that did not disguise her dread of the day when they 
should be young girls no longer, their quartette 
divided off into four duets, or possibly solos. “ And 
Nancy — ” Maizie checked herself. 

She and Mrs. Porter had once discussed the likeli- 
hood that Rick and Nancy’s love for each other, da- 
ting from childhood, now the most perfect brotherly 
and sisterly devotion, would one day blossom into 
another sort of love. Nancy’s mother had charged 
Maizie not to let its unfolding be hastened by a hint 
to either of her children, so now Maizie checked her- 
self at the unspoken word. 

“ And Nancy,” Nancy herself took up the sugges- 
tion, " will live close to Maizie, if Maizie is left alone, 
for Nancy is going to be the Doctor’s Assistant all 
her life, you know. Of course, splendid as it is to 
have daddy dearest see as much as he does now, still, 


SHEARING THE PALACE 


333 


I shall always have to read to him and help him a 
good deal. Do you know, I’m rather glad of that. I 
should be sorry not to be necessary to -him. Maybe 
that’s selfish; I don’t feel selfish when I say it. I 
have loved his leaning on me, even while it killed me 
to see him blind.” 

“ There is no chance of your not being necessary 
to him, Nancy girl,” said Maizie. “ If your father 
could not see, you would have to help him. If he does 
see what would there be worth looking at for him if 
you weren’t around ? ” 

“ That was a nice thing to say, Maizie, and it’s 
true,” said Nancy rising. “ When you’re an only 
child of course you are an only child, and your own 
can’t get on without you. I must go home. It was 
the most interesting talk! It seems rather awful to 
think of three of the double twins sort of slipping 
toward — toward, well, toward doubling still more ! ” 

“ Slipping their cogs?” suggested Taizie with her 
ringing laugh. “ We’re not going to be anything but 
young girls, if we have to be ’em by main force, not 
yet a while ! ” 

The next day the mail brought a brief letter from 
Mr. Carberry. 

“ 1 shall keep the jewelry which you have sent me 
till I hear further as to your wish to sell it. With the 
income which has been settled upon you there can be 
no conceivable reason why you should need more 


334 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


money, unless you have been more than extravagant, 
or have used your income for other purposes than the 
support for which your grandfather intended it. I 
am writing by the same mail to Mr. Debbs for in- 
structions. If he bids me, I will go to Chagford at 
once to see you, to help you, if I can do so without 
injustice.” 

Maizie read this letter aloud, consternation deepen- 
ing on her face as she read. 

“ Well, what — do — you — know — about — ” 
Taizie could get no further. 

“The pig!” cried Daisy. “Wasn’t the jewelry 
ours ? ” 

“ Whoever thought he’d make a row! If only we 
hadn’t done it! We could have got Tommy Giddings 
to take it to sell for us. He’d have done it and, if we 
had to tell him why, he’d have kept it to himself, if 
we made him swear to ! ” Hazie added. 

“ But he’s going to write, he has written Grand- 
father Debbs ! He knows it now ! ” Maizie gasped. 
“ What’ll he do to us ? What will he think ? Suppose 
he gets mad and cuts us off? We’d lose the house, 
because Mr. Dillingham would have to have that for 
the loan; we couldn’t sell it, or anything! We’d be 
poor! Poor again, like before, only worse, because 
we’ve got used to being rich.” 

“ If we had to be poor for any sensible reason! 
We’d stand it, if we had to be poor to cure Doctor 


SHEARING THE PALACE 335 

Porter, but just for nothing at all, without finding out 
one thing about us ! ” Daisy cried. 

“ But you don’t know that you are to be cut off,” 
protested Rhoda. “ I’m sure it will work out right in 
the end. Don’t jump at conclusions, twinsies!” 

“ Here comes some one, looks like a letter in his 
hand. From Grandfather Debbs, don’t you believe?” 
said Hazie from the window. 

It was. A maid offered the note to Miss Drum- 
mond and withdrew. 

“No, please read it, Rhoda; I’ve read enough,” 
said Maizie, refusing the note with a gesture of 
dread. 

Rhoda read the few lines which the note contained, 
written in a cramped hand, evidently by one to whom 
note-writing was unaccustomed torture. 

“To the Coggs Girls: ” it began, and, hearing this 
salutation, the four Coggs girls groaned. “ If you 
spend so much after all I give you that you go to 
trying to sell things, you do not deserve having me 
support you, and I won’t. I always knew you would 
not amount to anything, but I won’t support spenders, 
for you can’t spend right more than I give you. You 
will not get any more money but what you earn. 
Yours respectfully, Peter Debbs.” 

“ Oh, my gracious ! 4 Yours respectfully,’ to such a 
letter ! ” Taizie laughed hysterically. “ It’s dreadful, 
awful ! But isn’t he a funny old Peter ! ” 


336 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

“ He’s all of that, but there’s nothing funny about 
what he’s done,” groaned Maizie. 

“ And we can’t do one thing to explain, or Doctor 
Porter will pay his own bill,” added Daisy sadly. 

“ What shall we tell him? ” asked Hazie. 

“ Just that grandfather has given us up. I suppose 
we’d have to say he thought we were too extravagant. 
Then we might say we’d always been afraid he’d get 
tired of the bargain, because we have been scarey — 
till lately! We’d begun to feel safe,” Taizie checked 
herself, finding her voice unsteady. 

“ Well, let’s go and tell him,” said Hazie. “ He 
won’t know anything about it more than we say and 
that’s enough, what Taizie just said. I’ve got to get 
down to the Porters and tell them we’re poor again. 
I can’t stand trouble unless I tell it to the Porters. I 
wonder what work we can get in Chagford? Not the 
mills again, because Grandfather Debbs owns them. 
We couldn’t leave here now. We never had a home 
and real people, except here. And the best of them 
won’t like us less because we’re poor. They’ve all 
excused our crazy ways, before we had Rhoda and 
them to teach us, so they’ll excuse our losing every- 
thing, because our ways and talk were worse than 
being poor. Come on. Let’s ask the doctor and 
Mrs. Porter what to do.” 

The double twins arose and made ready for their 
walk. By an unspoken understanding they did not 


SHEARING THE PALACE 337 

dress for the car. Now that the fine car was not to 
be theirs they could not begin to walk too soon. 

“ Did you walk down?” asked Nancy, by way of 
greeting when she ran to let them in. Rhoda had 
stayed at home, in reality because she wanted to be 
alone to go over the situation in her mind, to try to 
discover a way to avert the misfortune that was over- 
taking these dear girls who so thoroughly deserved 
good fortune for the way they had met their promo- 
tion in the world, their unfailing goodness to every 
one. 

“ Where’s the car ? Girls, what’s wrong ? ” cried 
Nancy as the light fell on the four faces, so alike in 
feature, now alike in their sorrowful expression. 

“We came down to tell you all,” said Taizie, pre- 
ceding Nancy to the library. Here they quietly 
greeted Mrs. Porter, and waited while Nancy called 
her father and Rick, for the double twins said they 
wanted the entire household to hear what they had 
come to say. 

When the audience had assembled Maizie, the 
spokesman, told them that they had been deprived of 
all that they had acquired. It was a story of but few 
words, but it left its hearers breathless. 

“ Dear children, why ? ” cried Mrs. Porter, greatly 
disturbed. 

“ Oh, well, Grandfather Debbs thinks we’re extrav- 
agant,” said Taizie with elaborate carelessness. “Of 


338 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


course it isn’t as though we hadn’t been sort of afraid 
he would drop us some day. We did overdraw, and 
we thought we’d sell some stuff; rings and things. 
We sent them to Mr. Carberry and he told on us.” 

The girls had decided, coming down, that as much 
as this must be told; if Mr. Carberry did come to 
Chagford and talked to the doctor, as he would, it 
would arouse suspicion for them to make it a secret. 

“ We’ll have the money from the car and lots of 
things we can sell, to start on,” Taizie added care- 
lessly. 

“ And the house,” said Doctor Porter, scanning the 
double twins’ faces as keenly as his twilight vision 
allowed. 

“ Well, maybe not,” said Maizie, embarrassed by 
this unexpected thrust at her defences; it was impor- 
tant not to betray that the palace was pledged to Mr. 
Dillingham. “ I guess, maybe, we can’t sell the pal- 
ace. But we can shear it and it will give us lots of 
wool! Funny, we’ve been talking so long about 
shearing the palace of its fancy towers and things, 
and making it really nice, and now we’ve got to shear 
it to sell what we cut off!” Maizie tried to laugh, 
but it was not a merry laugh. 

“ I hardly think matters will be as bad as you ex- 
pect, my dears,” said the doctor. He and his wife 
glanced at each other with thorough understanding. 
“ I think your grandfather may be convinced that 


SHEARING THE PALACE 


339 


you are anything but spendthrifts, that he may rein- 
state you in your just dues, proudly proclaiming you 
fine young granddaughters, though foolish ones. How 
much did you offer Schwartzenwald-Siissenluft to 
come over here and examine me, Taizie ? ” 

Doctor Porter spoke rapidly, leaning forward the 
better to look into the face of the twin whom he had 
selected for his question because she would least of 
all know how to prevaricate. 

“We! Offer Doctor Sweetair? Why, he came, 
he wanted to see the country! And you paid his 
operation charge, Doctor Porter.” Taizie floundered 
badly, her face a purple red, her manner more guilty 
than an arrested thief’s. 

Doctor Porter slowly shook his forefinger at the 
double twins. 

“ I was suspicious from the first,” he said. “ I’ve 
been waiting; I knew the secret would out. You 
offered the specialist a large sum of money, thousands, 
for he would not have come for less, to cross the 
ocean to examine me. To meet this, you have pledged 
the palace. Being short of ready money, you have 
tried to sell your jewelry, and Mr. Carberry has re- 
ported to Mr. Debbs, as he was bound to do, though 
I wish he had first come here to investigate. Your 
grandfather, not understanding how you have spent 
so recklessly, cuts you off altogether. How is this 
for a deduction of facts? Can you deny the facts, 


340 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

dear, foolish little tawny-haired ostriches, hiding your 
shining heads and expecting the sands would cover 
them?” 

The double twins made inarticulate sounds, but they 
were truthful in their very fibre; their attempted 
blustering “ whys ” and “ ohs,” and “ For pity’s 
sakes ” could not take the place of a flat denial of the 
charge. 

“ Very well. This Sherlock Holmes, M. D., will 
at once wait upon old Peter Debbs and make him 
see justice. Old Peter is my patient, really fond 
of me, I know. He will swing from anger against 
you, to proud admiration when he learns what you 
have done. Though, mind, Donna Quixotes, you 
must never do anything of this sort again! I shall 
pay the sum for which you have mortgaged the pal- 
ace, your grandfather will continue your income — 
I am much mistaken if he does not feel more kindly 
to you than he has before — and all will go as merry 
as a marriage bell! By the way, Hazie, when this 
story is told to the Sweetairs, father and son, and they 
learn how you twin girls can love your friends, don’t 
you think they will say to each other : Poor or rich, 
red gold in her pockets, or only red gold on her bare 
head, a big-hearted girl of that sort is a rare prize 
for a man to win, for her power to love is a dower 
beyond rating ? ” 

The double twins sprang up and threw their arms 


SHEARING THE PALACE 


341 


around the doctor and Mrs. Porter, kissing them both 
and crying. They threw off all disguise at the same 
instant. They were discovered and they were both 
glad and sorry, but the relief in the prospect of being 
spared utter denuding was undeniably great. 

Doctor Porter took the hat and stick that Nancy 
offered him. 

“ Come, Rick, walk with me,” he said. “ Did any 
man ever go on such an embassy? Conceive of four 
slips of girls wrecking themselves that an old fellow 
like me might see again and be spared paying his own 
salvage! We’ll right this wrong; Fve only been 
waiting the hour. Come, Rick. Double twins, tele- 
phone for Elijah to come down after you, for there’s 
no need of your rehearsing the loss of the long silver 
car that is your joy.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


SHARING THE PALACE 

OCTOR PORTER and Rick parted 
company at old Peter Debbs’ door. 
The doctor was ushered into the old 
man’s presence. He found him look- 
ing particularly old, and appearing 
particularly grumpy, for, though he acknowledged it 
to no one, not even to himself, he had been watching 
his granddaughters’ career from afar and taking a 
certain surly pride in their generosity to others, their 
combination of a love of splendor with common sense 
in their own life. It annoyed him to feel obliged to 
condemn them for an extravagance which must repre- 
sent actual wrong expenditures, and to cast them 
off. 

“ Ah-h,” he growled at the doctor as he entered. 
Then he promptly added: “If you’ve come to talk 
about the Coggs girls, I don’t want to hear it.” 

“ Sorry for that,” said Doctor Porter calmly as he 
laid his hat and stick on one chair and seated himself 
on another. “ Truth to tell, I’ve come for your own 
342 



SHARING THE PALACE 343 

sake, Peter Debbs; I’ve seen serious symptoms in 
you.” 

“ That’s your way of meaning those twins,” said 
Mr. Debbs. “ I know you, doctor.” 

“ It’s a great thing to know some one, Mr. Debbs,” 
said Doctor Porter. “ Not an easy matter. So many 
hidden causes and meanings lie hidden away in every 
soul that it’s a difficult thing to be sure of knowing 
any one. It’s sure you never will know any one un- 
less you cultivate the habit of hearing two sides of 
the stories which float in on you. I never should dare 
diagnose a case I hadn’t seen because a symptom had 
been reported to me.” 

“ This isn’t Sunday, nor you ain’t a preacher,” said 
Peter Debbs, though his liking for Doctor Porter 
echoed through his speech and modified his growl. 

“ Great thing, again, to get two kinds of treatment 
from one man, instead of incurring indebtedness to 
two distinct professions,” commented Doctor Porter 
with unimpaired good nature. “ However, I don’t 
blame you for objecting to an unsolicited sermon; I 
should, myself. So we won’t fence; it isn’t like either 
of us. I’ve come to tell you that you’ve done wrong, 
wholly wrong, to condemn your grandchildren with- 
out an investigation. Any of us could have told you 
that they were not using your money in a way you 
would not approve. Please don’t interrupt me ; listen. 
Those children have been childishly generous and im- 


344 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

practical, but not worse. They’ve run into debt, mort- 
gaged their home, risked your displeasure, all for 
what? That I might see ! Yes,” added Doctor Porter 
as Peter Debbs uttered an exclamation, “ I owe my 
cure, as far as it is, or can be, a cure, to them. Let 
me tell you the story.” 

Peter Debbs had settled back into his chair, a vari- 
ety of expressions racing across his old face, relief 
and incredulity predominating. 

Doctor Porter told the story of the double twins’ 
devotion to him and told it well; no one could have 
heard it without feeling that, though the Coggs girls 
were grown up to young womanhood, they were at 
heart nothing else but inexperienced children, with 
children’s capacity for devotion to those they love 
and reckless indifference to consequences in a good 
cause. 

“Well, I will be blessed! ” said Peter Debbs when 
the story ended. 

“ Don’t you mean the twins will be blessed? ” asked 
Doctor Porter smiling. “ Peter Debbs, there aren’t 
bigger-hearted, truer, purer, more honest girls on 
earth than these four grandchildren of yours, whose 
delightful companionship your contrary folly has lost 
to you. They are as full of fun as a nut is of meat, 
bright, kindly, funny, lovable. Mrs. Porter and my 
Nancy are as fond of them as they can be; so am I. 
We count them one of our great pleasures. It is in- 


SHARING THE PALACE 


345 


conceivable that you have cut yourself off from such 
a source of joy, but, at least, I could not allow you 
to cut them off from their joys.” 

“ I’ll keep on giving them, same’s ever, more, 
mebbe,” said old Peter Debbs. “ You can tell ’em to 
count on the same’s they’ve been getting. Hold on; 
I’ll give ’em a check, each of ’em a check, for a pres- 
ent, extra, and let you take it to ’em. They may 
want something right off. Tell ’em it’s all right, and 
I say they did a good thing, only they mustn’t get the 
habit of doing good things, without knowing how to 
be businesslike. I’ll pay back that loan of Mr. Dil- 
lingham’s, so’s their house won’t be mortgaged, no 
sense in that, and let ’em start square.” 

* Doctor Porter shook his head. “ Not that, Mr. 
Debbs,” he said. “ That is my debt ; I shall square 
that account.” 

“ I’d rather; I want to,” said Peter Debbs eagerly. 
“ I’d like to, for your sake’s well’s the girls’. I’ve 
always known I owed you a lot for the things you 
done when I was a heap younger’n I am now and you 
was not much more’n a boy. * I want to pay off that 
mortgage.” 

“ Can’t be, Mr. Debbs,” said the doctor decidedly. 
“ A man must meet his obligations, you know. Any- 
thing you want to do for me, do for your grandchil- 
dren and I’ll consider it done for me. Glad I found 
you here, and more than glad to go away knowing 


346 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


( you see the Coggs girls as they are. Perhaps this 
investment of theirs will make you, as well as me, 
see; who knows?” 

“ Well, I’m willing to admit they’re better girls 
than I thought for, and they’ve turned out better ’n 
most poor girls would, gitting sudden rich,” said old 
Mr. Debbs. “ I guess when I settled a big income 
on ’em first off, I did it to see what there was into 
’em, and I’m ready to own up I didn’t think they’d 
stand it, thought they’d fly off one way or ’nother. 
But I guess my doing stops with money. I’ll finish 
up alone, same’s I’ve lived. If it’s any satisfaction 
to you, I don’t mind promising I’ll look up anything 
more I hear before I act on it. Oh, and I wish you’d 
telegraph Carberry not to come, that it’s all right and 
to express up what he’s holding. No need to tele- 
graph the word ‘jewelry;’ you never can tell who’ll 
read a thing like that.” 

“ Very well, Mr. Debbs, I’ll send the telegram, sign 
your name. We haven’t spoken of yourself. Are 
you well? Don’t need Doctor Mark Porter to pre- 
scribe, as well as preach, do you?” The doctor had 
risen and stood leaning on his cane, smiling down on 
the seamed old face which was raised to his, old Peter 
having kept his seat. 

“ I don’t know,” he said wistfully. “ I don’t know, 
some days, and then again I don't know ! I ain’t sick, 
but I feel funny, have considerable pain ’most every- 


SHARING THE PALACE 


347 


wheres there is for a pain to come — nerves, I guess. 
Truth to tell, I’m getting on, doctor; eighty’s where 
I can see it ’thout a spy glass. I don’t s’pose I’d 
oughter expect to feel eighteen.” 

“ None of us can; I don’t, and I’m a generation 
behind you on the road,” said the doctor. “ I’ll look 
in on you professionally in a day or so, in a friendly 
way, and perhaps I can drive out some of the pain, 
from some of its haunts. Good-by. I’m glad we had 
our talk. I’ll send the telegram to Mr. Carberry on 
my way, and I’ll see the twin girls at once, tell them 
the good news and give the checks to them. It ought 
to be like a glass of port wine to you, warming all 
your veins, to know that in an hour or so the twin 
grandchildren will be as happy as they have been cast 
down. Good day to you, Mr. Debbs, and better days 
to come.” 

Great was the double twins’ rejoicing when Doctor 
Porter returned from his embassy. 

“ Come on and hug the palace! ” cried Taizie, seiz- 
ing her own twin’s hand. 

The four absurd girls made a linked chain and 
danced all around, completely encircling the big 
palace, which they explained was “ hugging it to show 
it how glad they were it was not going to be 
sold.” 

“ We’ll get an architect right away and let him draw 
how it ought to be, to be a real fine house, in good 


348 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


taste,” cried Maizie. “ We’ll shear it as soon as we 
can, the way we first planned to shear it, now we won’t 
have to shear it the other way — like a sheep to get 
its wool. I wonder if it’s glad to stay on with us ! I 
think houses get used to their families; they 
must.” 

“ Then I’ll bet ours thinks it’s a circus tent ! ” cried 
Hazie. 

“ Poor old Peter Debbs, grandfather ! ” said Daisy 
thoughtfully. “ It sounds sad to hear of him alone, 
seeing eighty with his naked eye, coming around the 
corner! I wish we could let some of the twins’ fun 
jump over into his pasture.” 

Kind wishes may make themselves fulfilled, some 
people hold. At least Daisy’s wish found its oppor- 
tunity, and sooner than she expected. 

Three days passed after the double twins had been 
reinstated. They were days filled to overflowing with 
happiness, the happiness of a great relief. 

The double twins felt as though they had been en- 
dowed with fabulous wealth, increased a hundredfold 
by its restoration when they had been bracing them- 
selves to do without it altogether. They built castles 
in Spain enough to have crowded Castile and Aragon 
and made it necessary for Columbus to discover an- 
other world for Spanish territory to accommodate 
them. 

In imagination they disbursed fortunes, built asy- 


SHARING THE PALACE 


349 


lums, educated poor girls, fed the starving, feeling as 
though unlimited power to do all these beautiful things 
had been conferred upon them, though not more than 
a small fraction of them were within their com- 
pass. 

Doctor Porter had discharged the palace from its 
responsibility for the cost of his cure. This was a 
thorn in the riotous blossoming of the twins’ happi- 
ness, but among their day dreams was a favorite one 
of making this up to him in some undefined way. 

On the fourth day after Doctor Porter had ex- 
plained away their grandfather’s wrath, Doctor Gan- 
son, the chief physician at Chagford Falls, drove over 
to see the double twins. 

“ I thought it my duty to come to you at once,” he 
said. “ I was called in to see your grandfather, Mr. 
Debbs, last night, because there was not time to send 
for Doctor Porter, who, as you know, is his physician. 
Mr. Debbs has had a stroke. It is not a severe one; 
he will be almost as well as he was before it happened 
in a short time. Almost, but not quite. There is no 
saying when this may happen again, nor how serious 
another paralytic stroke might prove. He is very hale 
and strong, for so old a man, yet in every case years 
have done their work, however they hide it. I am 
going on to see Doctor Porter, but you have the first 
claim to know that your grandfather is growing rap- 
idly feeble.” 


350 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


Doctor Ganson, his errand done, drove away. He 
left a disturbed quartette of girls. What ought they 
do? What would their grandfather wish them to 
do? 

“ He wouldn’t want one of us to go there to keep 
house for him, would he? He wouldn’t come here to 
let us look after him, would he ? Oh, dear ; ought we 
to have him here? Wouldn’t it be rather awful, when 
we don’t know him and do know about him? ” Maizie 
fairly groaned. 

“ A cranky old man and sick! We’d never dare be 
silly and jolly again! ” said Taizie. 

“ But it looks as though we ought to ask him ; what 
do you say, Rhoda ? ” asked Daisy. 

“ It doesn’t seem to admit discussion, does it ? ” 
said Rhoda gently. “ What are we told about him 
who refuses compassion to his brother in his need? 
And this is your mother’s father, to whom you owe 
all you enjoy. Poor old Mr. Debbs! He has been 
standing in his own sunshine for many a day and 
now the shadow has fallen! It may not be so bad 
having him to look after. Perhaps he will like your 
nonsensical pranks. He can have a room far off in 
the western wing, where he can be quiet. You can 
have a nurse for him, if need be. I wouldn’t dread 
it too much.” 

“ Did you ever notice, twinsies, that when Rhoda 
thinks we ought to do a thing she speaks as if it were 


SHARING THE PALACE 


351 


settled, as if she were sure we’d play up?” hinted 
Taizie. “ Well, Rhoda-Reformer, we aren’t so killing 
hard-hearted, and if poor old Grandfather Petey is 
ready to be done for, we’ll do him! WVve always 
been pretty good kids at swallowing doses and you 
won’t see us wink over this one. We’ll offer to adopt 
him, won’t we, twinsies ? ” 

“ Go right over,” agreed Maizie. “ We’ll tell him : 
Grandfather, here are four perfectly good grandchil- 
dren ready to take care of you and jolly you along. 
Come and be jollied! There’s one thing: he must 
know we aren’t after anything in making the offer, 
because he has given us all we want. And he must 
know, if he stops to think, that lively girls can’t want 
to adopt an old man who never has been willing so 
much as to look at them. So I should think it would 
please him a lot to be asked. What shall we wear? ” 

Thus it was settled, quicker than most unimportant 
decisions are made, that' the double twins were to 
adopt their grandfather into the happy household at 
the palace. 

Elijah drove them over to see the old gentleman that 
night. 

They found him willing to receive them, and this 
was in itself a great change. No one knew precisely 
what to say when they entered. Fortunately Peter 
Debbs’ cat broke the ice by sailing into the room with 
pride written on every stiffened muscle and on her 


352 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


waving tail, her head thrown back and in her mouth 
a particularly large rat, which she deposited, as a 
courteous attention, at Maizie’s feet. 

Maizie neither jumped nor screamed, instead she 
stroked the cat and praised her, to old Peter’s satis- 
faction. It happened that he especially disliked 
jumpy, screaming girls, and especially liked his cat; 
Maizie had been given a short cut to his approval. 

“Ain’t afraid of rats, eh? Like cats?” he said. 

“ Not afraid of dead rats,” said Maizie with the in- 
fectious laugh that was the lucky gift of each twin. 
“ And there aren’t many things I like better than a 
nice cat.” 

“They’re animals worth respecting; you can look 
up to a cat. They won’t call any man master, but they 
like the one they like. Mrs. Bemis is a fine cat; I’m 
proud of her. Sit down, can’t ye?” said old Peter 
fretfully. 

“ Mrs. Bemis ! What a funny name for a cat ! ” 
exclaimed Hazie as the double twins accepted the 
invitation and found chairs. 

“ Better’n Minnie and Daisy and such foolish 
names. I got her from a Mrs. Bemis; that’s why. 
One of you is named Daisy — which ? ” asked their 
grandfather. 

“ Margaret I’m named, grandfather,” said Daisy. 
“We all have sensible names, unless Hazel is a little 
fancy, but we’ve always been nicknamed.” 


SHARING THE PALACE 


353 


There was a pause and the old man looked from 
one to the other of the four girls, appraising them, 
vainly endeavoring to detect differences. He held 
his right hand in his left, rubbing the paralyzed 
fingers; the paralysis had been a light stroke, con- 
fined to the right hand. 

“ Grandfather Debbs,” said Maizie suddenly, 
ending the embarrassing silence, “ we don’t want 
you to stay here alone, with only hired people to 
look after you. We live in a great house — 
thanks to you — we’re easy to get on with, we will 
do every earthly thing you want us to do for you 
and try not to do what you don’t like. Come home; 
it’s really your home, you know. Come home with 
us, to stay. Come home. We came to say this.” 

“We certainly did. We’re not bad when you 
know us. Come,” Daisy supplemented her. 

“ We’re like Mrs. Bemis, we’re pretty independ- 
ent, but we like the ones we like,” Taizie chimed 
in. 

“ Just come home and let us be the real thing in 
grandchildren,” said Hazie. 

Old Peter Debbs flushed the painful flush of old age. 
Tears came in his eyes. 

“ Suppose it comes again, worse ? ” he said, holding 
up the affected hand. 

That touched the easily melted hearts of that loving 
quartette of girls. 


354 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


“ It won’t, but if it did, you’d need us! ” cried Tai- 
zie, and she ran over to the old man and patted his 
shoulder. 

“ Then we’d have dead loads of fun waiting on 
you!” cried Maizie, joining Taizie on her grand- 
father’s other side. 

“ We haven’t one soul but ourselves belonging to 
us, no one to take care of ! ” said Hazie, trying to be 
pathetic and failing, but crossing over like the other 
two to hang over her grandfather’s chair. 

“ We’d love to pay back a little of what you’ve 
done,” said Daisy completing the wreath of hover- 
ing granddaughters. 

The crabbed old man could not withstand their 
sweetness. He actually touched Taizie’s cheek with 
his withered left hand. 

“ Good girls ! ” he said huskily. “ I’d have to bring 
Mrs. Bemis.” 

“ There’s room enough in the palace for Mrs. Bemis 
to bring up twelve kittens a year and catch all the 
rats in China to give them,” cried Maizie. “ And 
we’re simply daffy about all animals! When’ll you 
come; now? Better come right along this minute 
and let some one else pack up and send your things 
to-morrow. You wouldn’t have any bother that way 
and the quicker the better.” 

So it was settled, the great change made that in a 
few moments had transformed old Peter Debbs from 


SHARING THE PALACE 355 

the dreaded unknown source of the double twins’ 
pleasures, their forbidding, unwilling relative, to the 
dependent old grandfather whose life, as long as it 
should last, would be the chief care and responsibility 
of these four girls. 

Now that they had come to him with their fresh 
young laughing faces, their bright eyes, their radiant 
hair, their abounding vitality, above all their warm 
pity and affection readily out-poured, old Peter Debbs 
could not see them depart. It ended in his house- 
keeper’s actually making him ready to go away with 
them and his being carried off in the steady, swift car 
to the palace. 

Rhoda had a fire burning on the hearth of the 
room which he was to have, for she rightly guessed 
that, though it was warm, the old man would be 
chilled by his drive. Elijah had been detailed to look 
after him at first. That long, glum-looking, but 
faithful and devoted personage, willingly undertook 
this duty, to which no other than a Chagford chauffeur 
could have been assigned. 

Old Peter found himself cared for as never before, 
and he sank into his luxurious quarters with a sense 
of his bread-upon-the-waters proving to be the plum- 
miest of cakes. 

The double twins necessarily found the old man’s 
presence in the palace somewhat burdensome, but, 
with the philosophy which was natural to them and 


356 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


which early hardship had fostered, they assumed the 
burden gaily and, after a time, it lightened. 

Maizie was his favorite, “ because she went 
ahead,” Maizie herself explained it. “ There wasn’t 
any other difference.” 

“ You’re getting chipper, grandfather,” Maizie said 
one day, after old Peter had made a feeble joke and 
enjoyed it himself beyond its deserts. “ You’re grow- 
ing more and more like your grandchildren ! ” 

The old man chuckled. “You’ve done me good; 
I don’t mind owning it,” he said. 

“ Youth is catching,” said Maizie. “ So is fun. 
I’m glad you like us — or like it here.” 

“ You’re good girls,” the old man said emphatically. 
“ Good girls ! I’m real pleased with you. Hazie said 
your birthday — yours and Daisy’s — was next week. 
What do you want I should do for you? ” 

“ Honest to goodness,” said Maizie, relapsing into 
the old affirmation, “ there doesn’t seem to be one 
thing we want, not like presents. But if you could 
find a way of making Doctor Porter take that mort- 
gage money back we’d be tickled pink, all of us ! ” 

“ Hard matter to do,” said Peter Debbs shaking 
his head. “ A man wants to pay his own bills, you 
see. But I thought I’d leave that, with something 
over and above, to him in my will, or to that little 
Nancy of his — how’d that be? ” 

“ Splendid ! ” cried Maizie clapping her hands. 


SHARING THE PALACE 357 

“ That’s just the way to do it! Why didn’t we think 
of it, and how did you happen to ? ” 

“ You don’t mind giving up part of what’s coming 
to you ? ” suggested her grandfather, eyeing her curi- 
ously. 

'‘Mercy, why should we? We don’t need a bit 
more than we have!” cried Maizie. “But, Grand- 
father Mr. Debbs, I wonder if you’d let us shear the 
palace ? ” 

“ Hey ? ” said the old man. 

“ Shear the palace,” Maizie laughed. “ Cut off 
what it oughtn’t to have and put on what it should 
have, make it over? It’s a pretty awful house; all 
show and size and bad taste. People said so when we 
bought it, but we couldn’t see it. Now we can, and 
that shows we’ve improved a heap! We’d like to 
change it; it could be really fine. Would you let us? 
It would cost a great deal, but it would be the best 
birthday present for all four of us, as well as the two 
whose birthday is on June tenth.” 

“ Well, sir, if it don’t beat all! ” said Peter Debbs 
slowly. “ A house like this ain’t good enough for my 
granddaughters, old Peter Debbs’ granddaughters ! 
Why, it looks to me like about as handsome a edifice 
as I ever seen! But the world moves! I tell you, 
Mary, when your mother was born your grandmother 
and me was living in a little house for ten dollars a 
month, and proud of the way we’d got up in the 


358 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

world. But this shows how far I must ’a’ got up by 
now, if this mansion ain’t good enough for my girl’s 
girls. Go ahead and do what you want to. I’ll pay 
for it. I’ve found out you’re what I call lavish, but 
not wasteful, so go ahead.” 

Maizie ran to tell the other twins and Rhoda of this 
permission. That evening’s mail took to Boston a 
summons to the best architect in that city, whom the 
double twins had been longing to call to transform 
the palace. 

Mr. Olney, the architect, came to be the double 
twins’ guest for several days. He measured, calcu- 
lated, stood surveying the house from every point and 
then took possession of the library and drew his plans. 
They were done on the eve of the elder twins’ birth- 
day and the girls issued invitations to every one they 
knew well “ to meet the palace plans.” 

Mrs. Deacon and Lora Bruce and her mother came, 
so did Lizzie Horn and, of course, Mr. Dermot and 
Tommy Giddings. 

Tommy’s air toward Taizie nowadays was that of 
an assured proprietor, but now he seemed castdown. 

“ It makes a fellow feel pretty uncomfortable to 
find you making plans to have one of the most truly 
splendid houses in Massachusetts, Taizie,” he said, 
“ a fellow that has only a good position, running 
mills, and a decent income. How’ll I ever marry 
you?” 


SHARING THE PALACE 


359 


“ Well, who in all this world ever asked you to 
marry me, Tommy Giddings! ” cried Taizie. “ Who’s 
talking about marrying? I’m not eighteen years old 
and I’ve plenty of interesting things to do besides 
that ! I’d rather run the car than a husband — now. 
But if you wanted to — some day — and if I did, well, 
of all silly talk that about fine houses and your salary 
is the silliest! Wouldn’t Grandfather Debbs’ money 
be enough? What would be the difference if he gave 
it to me and you helped me handle it ? It’s all the same, 
such things ! But nobody’s talking of marrying. Kurt 
Sweetair wrote Doctor Porter, when the doctor told 
them about grandfather’s getting mad and cutting us 
off that time, that he hadn’t supposed he could like 
Hazie better than he did, but the doctor’s story made 
him. And Daisy got the loveliest set of three books 
from her newspaper friend, Despard Longacre, you 
ever saw to-day and a nice, nice birthday note ! ” added 
Taizie inconsistently. 

“ But nobody’s talking of marrying, not even a long 
time hence! ” laughed Tommy. “ Maizie is the only 
one that hasn’t a searchlight out after her.” 

“ Maizie honestly would rather not be bothered,” 
said Taizie. “ But I suppose she’ll go suddenly, 
quicker than any of us, likely. Tommy, we had a 
letter from Reginald Claude ! He says he ‘ is going 
on steady in his work and he sees his balloon just 
a-floating to him ’ Isn’t that funny ? He wasn’t 


360 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


wicked; he isn’t quite all there. I’m so glad he wasn’t 
clapped into prison! Wasn’t that a funny adventure 
of mine? ” 

“ I remember it with much satisfaction, Miss 
Coggs,” said Tommy solemnly. “ Maizie is beckon- 
ing you, Taize.” 

The palace drawing-room was well filled with 
guests. Old Peter Debbs sat enjoying the scene, con- 
tent at last with the result of his fortunate life. Dear 
little Grandma Emerson kept him company, her 
sprightly talk amusing him and making him feel 
young, for there were but a few months between their 
ages. The Misses Allaire were deep in the plans 
which Mr. Olney was showing them. Miss Belinda 
looked perfectly happy; she loved beauty and under- 
stood art, and the palace, transformed according to 
these plans, would be a delight to the eye. 

Doctor and Mrs. Porter also leaned over the rail 
which had been placed before the plans to insure 
everybody’s seeing them from the right distance. 

The doctor could see them! Once more the double 
twins felt their hearts leap with joy at a new proof 
that their beloved old friend had received back his 
birthright, if only in part. 

Mimi Hunt, Doris Clark, Cordie Tilden, Amabel 
Willis, Louise Willis, or rather Mrs. Miles Lawrence 
as she had been for some time, all were there. 

The young people gathered around the piano and 


SHARING THE PALACE 


361 


Rick played for them to Nancy’s accompaniment. 
Rick’s violin playing increased each year in skill and 
beauty. Had he chosen he could have played to world- 
wide audiences, not to Chagford only. But the boy 
had elected to study medicine and settle down as 
Doctor Porter’s successor, be to him the son he never 
had, with greater love than the average son can prove. 
Already it was understood, without words between 
them, that both hoped and knew that one day, when 
sweet Nancy awakened to womanhood, Rick would be 
the doctor’s son in truth. 

To-night Rick’s playing surpassed itself. In a short 
time he had all the young people dancing, which was 
what he had meant to do, leading up to the carrying 
out of a plot between all of them, but the double 
twins. 

Somehow they encircled Maizie, Daisy, Taizie and 
Hazie who stood, looking happy and uncommonly 
pretty in their white gowns, ensnared by their 
friends. 

Rick, with his violin, sprang to join the circle 
and Nancy, jumping up from the piano, followed 
him. 

Suddenly they all began to sing as Rick played, 
leaning forward to look into the surprised faces of 
the double twins, laughing, yet meaning what they 
sang. 

And this was what they sang, doggerel rhymes, yet 


362 NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 


sincere, based on the old count which the double twins 
themselves had made on their names: 

“ Maizie, Daisy, Taizie, Hazie, came and set our hearts ablaze. 
Maizie, Daisy, Taizie, Hazie, twice two twins ’bout whom we’re 
crazy! 

We’ve a spell all spells above: C-o-g-g-s spells — Lovel 
Here’s a count, all Chagford shouts it: 

I-t it, they’re it, who doubts it? ” 


THE END. 


Selections from 
The Page Company’s 
Books for Young People 


THE BLUE BONNET SERIES 

Each large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, per 
volume $1.50 

A TEXAS BLUE BONNET 

By Caroline E. Jacobs. 

“ The book’s heroine, Blue Bonnet, has the very finest 
kind of wholesome, honest, lively girlishness and cannot 
but make friends with every one who meets her through 
the book as medium.” — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

BLUE BONNET’S RANCH PARTY 

By Caroline E. Jacobs and Edyth Ellerbeck Read. 
“ The story is both pretty and unhackneyed in its sim- 
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thing to be imagined.” — The Living Age. 

BLUE BONNET IN BOSTON; Or, Boarding- 

School Days at Miss North’s. 

By Caroline E. Jacobs and Lela Horn Richards. 
Blue Bonnet enters a Boston boarding-school in this 
volume, and though she finds it rather hard to conform 
to the rules and regulations, her breezy, generous and 
impulsive nature soon make her a favorite at the select 
school. 

A— 1 


THE PAGE COMPANY’S 


THE YOUNG PIONEER SERIES 

By Harrison Adams 

Each 12mo, cloth decorative , illustrated , per 
volume $1.25 

THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE OHIO; Or, 

Clearing the Wilderness. 

“ Such books as this are an admirable means of stimu- 
lating among the young Americans of to-day interest in 
the story of their pioneer ancestors and the early days of 
the Republic.” — Boston Globe. 

“ Very interesting and instructive from a historical 
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endured by the pioneers of the Revolutionary days.” — 
Omaha Excelsior. 

THE PIONEER BOYS ON THE GREAT LAKES ; 

Or, On the Trail of the Iroquois. 

“ The recital of the daring deeds of the frontier is not 
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sterling type of character which these days of self-reliance 
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THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE MISSISSIPPI; 

Or, The Homestead in the Wilderness. 

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THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE MISSOURI; 

Or, In the Country of the Sioux. 

“ Vivid in style, vigorous in movement, full of dramatic 
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capital one for boys.” — Watchman Examiner, New York 
City. 


BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 


THE HADLEY HALL SERIES 

By Louise M. Breitenbach 
Each large 12mo, cloth decorative , illustrated , per 
volume $1.50 

ALMA AT HADLEY HALL 

“ The author is to be congratulated on having written 
such an appealing book for girls.” — Detroit Free Press. 

ALMA’S SOPHOMORE YEAR 

“ It cannot fail to appeal to the lovers of good things 
in girls’ books.” — Boston Herald. 

“ It is a wholesome story as well as a most entertaining 
one, and is a valuable addition to the literature for girls.” 
— The Gateway Gazette, Beaumont, Cal. 

ALMA’S JUNIOR YEAR 

“ The diverse characters in the boarding-school are 
strongly drawn, the incidents are well developed and the 
action is never dull.” — The Boston Herald. 


THE GIRLS OF 
FRIENDLY TERRACE SERIES 

By Harriet Lummis Smith 
Each large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated , 
per volume $1.50 

THE GIRLS OF FRIENDLY TERRACE 

“ A book sure to please girl readers, for the author seems 
to understand perfectly the girl character.” — Boston 
Globe. 

PEGGY RAYMOND’S VACATION 

“It is a clean, wholesome, hearty story, well told and 
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one through experiences that hearten and brighten the 
day.” — Utica, N. Y., Observer. 

A— 3 


THE PAGE COMPANY’S 


FAMOUS LEADERS SERIES 

By Chakles H. L. Johnston 
Each large 12mo, cloth decorative , illustrated , per 
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FAMOUS CAVALRY LEADERS 

“ More of such books should be written, books that 
acquaint young readers with historical personages in a 
pleasant, informal way.” — New York Sun. 

“ It is a book that will stir the heart of every boy and 
will prove interesting as well to the adults.” — Lawrence 
Daily World. 

FAMOUS INDIAN CHIEFS 

“ Mr. Johnston has done faithful work in this volume, 
and his relation of battles, sieges and struggles of these 
famous Indians with the whites for the possession of 
America is a worthy addition to United States History.” 
— New York Marine Journal. 

FAMOUS SCOUTS 

“ It is the kind of a book that will have a great fascina- 
tion for boys and young men, and while it entertains them 
it will also present valuable information in regard to 
those who have left their impress upon the history of the 
country.” — The New London Day. 

FAMOUS PRIVATEERSMEN AND ADVEN- 
TURERS OF THE SEA 

“ The tales are more than merely interesting; they are 
entrancing, stirring the blood with thrilling force and 
bringing new zest to the never-ending interest in the 
dramas of the sea.” — The Pittsburgh Post. 

FAMOUS FRONTIERSMEN AND HEROES 
OF THE BORDER 

This book is devoted to a description of the adventur- 
ous lives and stirring experiences of many pioneer heroes 
who were prominently identified with the opening of the 
Great West. 

“ The accounts are not only authentic, but distinctly 
readable, making a book of wide appeal to all who love 
the history of actual adventure.” — Cleveland Leader. 
A— 4 


BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 


DOCTOR'S LITTLE GIRL SERIES 

By Marion Ames Taggart 
Each large 12mo, cloth , illustrated, per vol. . $1.50 

THE DOCTOR’S LITTLE GIRL 

“ A charming story of the ups and downs of the life of a 
dear little maid/’ — The Churchman. 

SWEET NANCY: The Further Adventures of 
the Doctor’s Little Girl. 

“ Just the sort of book to amuse, while its influence 
cannot but be elevating.” — New York Sun. 

NANCY, THE DOCTOR’S LITTLE PARTNER 

“ The story is sweet and fascinating, such as many girls 
of wholesome tastes will enjoy.” — Springfield Union. 

NANCY PORTER’S OPPORTUNITY 

“ Nancy shows throughout that she is a splendid young 
woman, with plenty of pluck.” — Boston Globe. 

NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS 

The breezy Coggs twins — four girls — first introduced 
in “ Nancy, the Doctor’s Little Partner,” take the centre 
of the stage in this new story, although Nancy plays a 
most important part. 


THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR 
RANCH 

By Eleanor Stuart. 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . . $1.50 

“It is a wholesome tale about healthy, lovable girls.” 
— Scranton Times. 

THE FIDDLING GIRL 

By Daisy Rhodes Campbell. 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . . $1.25 

A charming story of how a young girl realizes her am- 
bitions and becomes an accomplished violinist. 

THE ISLAND OF MAKE BELIEVE 

By Blanche E. Wade. 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . . $1.50 

This is a delightful story of the different ways in which 
little people can entertain themselves. 

A— 5 


THE PAGE COMPANY’S 


THE BOYS’ STORY OF THE 
RAILROAD SERIES 

By Burton E. Stevenson 

Each large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, per 
volume . $1.50 

THE YOUNG SECTION - HAND ; Or, The Ad- 
ventures of Allan West. 

“ A thrilling story, well told, clean and bright. The 
whole range of section railroading is covered in the story, 
and it contains information as well as interest.” — Chicago 
Post. 

THE YOUNG TRAIN DISPATCHER 

“ A vivacious account of the varied and often hazard- 
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in which the author has woven admirable advice about 
honesty, manliness, self-culture, good reading, and the 
secrets of success.” — Congregationalist. 

THE YOUNG TRAIN MASTER 

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THE YOUNG APPRENTICE j Or, Allan West’s 
Chum. 

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great car shops not easily gained elsewhere.” — Baltimore 
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“ The lessons that the books teach in development of 
uprightness, honesty and true manly character are sure 
to appeal to the reader.” — The American Boy. 


BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 


THE LITTLE COLONEL BOOKS 

(Trade Mark) 

By Annie Fellows Johnston 
Each large 12mo, cloth, illustrated, per volume . $1.50 

THE LITTLE COLONEL STORIES 

(Trade Mark) 

Being three “ Little Colonel ” stories in the Cosy Corner 
Series, “ The Little Colonel,” “ Two Little Knights of 
Kentucky,” and “ The Giant Scissors,” in a single volume. 

THE LITTLE COLONEL’S HOUSE PARTY 

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THE LITTLE COLONEL’S HOLIDAYS 

(Trade Mark) 

THE LITTLE COLONEL’S HERO 

(Trade Mark) 

THE LITTLE COLONEL AT BOARDING- 

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SCHOOL 

THE LITTLE COLONEL IN ARIZONA 

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THE LITTLE COLONEL’S CHRISTMAS 

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VACATION 

THE LITTLE COLONEL, MAID OF HONOR 

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THE LITTLE COLONEL’S KNIGHT COMES 

(Trade Mark) 

RIDING 

MARY WARE: THE LITTLE COLONEL’S 

(Trade Mark) 

CHUM 

MARY WARE IN TEXAS 
MARY WARE’S PROMISED LAND 

These twelve volumes, boxed as a set, $18.00. 

A— 7 


THE PAGE COMPANY'S 


SPECIAL HOLIDAY EDITIONS 

Each small quarto, cloth decorative, per volume . $1.25 

New plates, handsomely illustrated with eight full-page 
drawings in color, and many marginal sketches. 

THE LITTLE COLONEL 

(Trade Mark) 

TWO LITTLE KNIGHTS OF KENTUCKY 
THE GIANT SCISSORS 
BIG BROTHER 

THE JOHNSTON JEWEL SERIES 

Each small 16mo , cloth decorative, with frontispiece 

and decorative text borders, per volume . . $0.50 

IN THE DESERT OF WAITING: The Legend 
of Camelback Mountain. 

THE THREE WEAVERS: A Fairy Tale for 
Fathers and Mothers as Well as for Their 
Daughters. 

KEEPING TRYST: A Tale of King Arthur’s 
Time. 

THE LEGEND OF THE BLEEDING HEART 
THE RESCUE OF PRINCESS WINSOME: 

A Fairy Play for Old and Young. 

THE JESTER’S SWORD 


THE LITTLE COLONEL’S GOOD TIMES 
BOOK 

Uniform in size with the Little Colonel Series . $1.50 

Bound in white kid (morocco) and gold . . 3.00 

Cover design and decorations by Peter Verberg. 

“ A mighty attractive volume in which the owner may 
record the good times she has on decorated pages, and 
under the directions as it were of Annie Fellows John- 
ston.” — Buffalo Express. 

A — 8 


BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 


THE LITTLE COLONEL DOLL BOOK 

Quarto, boards, printed in colors . . . $1.50 

A series of “ Little Colonel ” dolls. There are many of 
them and each has several changes of costume, so that 
the happy group can be appropriately clad for the re- 
hearsal of any scene or incident in the series. 

THE MARY WARE DOLL BOOK 

Quarto, boards, printed in colors . . . $1.50 

An artistic series of paper dolls, including not only 
lovable Mary Ware, the Little Colonel’s chum, but many 
another of the much loved characters which appear in 
the last three volumes of the famous “ Little Colonel 
Series.” 

ASA HOLMES 

By Annie Fellows Johnston. 

With a frontispiece by Ernest Fosbery. 

16mo, cloth decorative, gilt top . . $1.00 

“ ‘ Asa Holmes ’ is the most delightful, most sympa- 
thetic and wholesome book that has been published in a 
long while.” — Boston Times. 

TRAVELERS FIVE: ALONG LIFE’S HIGH- 
WAY 

By Annie Fellows Johnston. 

With an introduction by Bliss Carman, and a frontis- 
piece by E. H. Garrett. 

12mo, cloth decorative $1.25 

“ Mrs. Johnston broadens her reputation with this book 
so rich in the significance of common things.” — Boston 
Advertiser. 

JOEL: A BOY OF GALILEE 

By Annie Fellows Johnston. 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . . $1.50 

“ The book is a very clever handling of the greatest 
event in the history of the world.” — Rochester, N. Y ., 
Herald. . 

“ Reverently written, it possesses much attraction for 
the piously inclined, and this seems to have increased 
rather than decreased in the years the work has been 
before the public.” — Chicago Daily News . 

A— 9 


THE PAGE COMPANY f S 


WORKS OF 

MARSHALL SAUNDERS 

Each large 12mo , cloth decorative, illustrated, per 
volume $1.50 

BEAUTIFUL JOE’S PARADISE ; Or, The Island 

of Brotherly Love. A Sequel to “ Beautiful Joe.” 

“ This book revives the spirit of ‘ Beautiful Joe ’ capi- 
tally. It is fairly riotous with fun, and is about as unusual 
as anything in the animal book line that has seen the 
light.” — Philadelphia Item. 

TILDA JANE 

“ I cannot think of any better book for children than 
this. I commend it unreservedly.” — Cyrus T. Brady. 

TILDA JANE’S ORPHANS. A Sequel to “ ’Tilda 
Jane.” 

“ It is written in the author’s best vein, and presents 
a variety of interesting characters.” — New London Day. 

TILDA JANE IN CALIFORNIA 

The story is full of life and action, and troubles, which 
lead to character building, mingled with fun and cheer- 
fulness, and is a wholesome book to put in the hands of 
girl readers. 

PUSSY BLACK - FACE : The Story of a Kitten 
and Her Friends. 

“ This is one of Marshall Saunders’s best stories, and 
Miss Saunders has an enviable reputation as a writer of 
animal life.” — Los Angeles, Cal., Express. 

THE STORY OF THE GRAVELYS 

“ The story is full of that refinement which appeals to 
the best taste. It takes for its motto Cardinal Gibbons’s 
expression that ‘ A child’s needless tear is a blood-blot 
on this earth,’ and works out a beautiful and moving 
story.” — St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 

A— 10 


BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 


WORKS OF EVALEEN STEIN 

THE CHRISTMAS PORRINGER 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by Adelaide 

Everhart SI. 25 

This story happened many hundreds of years ago in 
the quaint Flemish city of Bruges and concerns a little 
girl named Karen, who worked at lace-making with her 
aged grandmother. 

GABRIEL AND THE HOUR BOOK 

Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and 
decorated in colors by Adelaide Everhart . SI .00 

“No works in juvenile fiction contain so many of the 
elements that stir the hearts of children and grown-ups as 
well as do the stories so admirably told by this author.” 

— Louisville Daily Courier. 

A LITTLE SHEPHERD OF PROVENCE 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by Diantha 

H. Marlowe SI . 25 

“ The story should be one of the influences in the life 
of every child to whom good stories can be made to 
appeal.” — Public Ledger. 

THE LITTLE COUNT OF NORMANDY 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by John Goss $1.25 
“ This touching and pleasing story is told with a wealth 
of interest coupled with enlivening descriptions of the 
country where its scenes are laid and of the people thereof.” 

— Wilmington Every Evening. 


THE LITTLE FLORENTINE 

By H. Twitchell. 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . . SI. 25 

An unusually charming story of a talented young mu- 
sician, who lived in the early part of the seventeenth 
century, and of his struggle for recognition. 

A— 11 


THE PAGE COMPANY'S 


THE RIVAL CAMPERS SERIES 

By Ruel Perley Smith 
Each large 12mo, cloth decorative , illustrated , per 
volume $1.50 

THE RIVAL CAMPERS; Or, The Adventures 
of Henry Burns. 

“ The best boys’ book since ‘ Tom Sawyer.’ ” — San 
Francisco Examiner. 

THE RIVAL CAMPERS AFLOAT; Or, The 

Prize Yacht Viking. 

“ An excellent and exciting story with abundant matter 
of interest to attract healthy minds.” — N. Y. Sun. 

THE RIVAL CAMPERS ASHORE; Or, The 

Mystery of the Mill. 

“ As interesting ashore as when afloat, and they keep 
things pretty well stirred up individually as well as col- 
lectively.” — The Interior. 

THE RIVAL CAMPERS AMONG THE OYS- 
TER PIRATES; Or, Jack Harvey’s Adventures. 
“ Just the type of book which is most popular with lads 
who are in their early teens.” — The Philadelphia Item. 


RALPH SOMERBY AT PANAMA 

By Francis Raleigh. 

Large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . $1.50 

“ It is full of action, contains many a bit of historical 
information, and is not exaggerated in any way. The 
boys will enjoy reading it immensely.” — Boston Times. 


HAWK: THE YOUNG OSAGE 

By C. H. Robinson. 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . $1.25 

“ Such books are helpful, for they add a vast fund of 
knowledge to a boy’s mind and he is stimulated to engage 
in sports which develop the body and inspire the mind.” 
— New Haven Times Leader. 

A— 12 


BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 


THE SANDMAN SERIES 

By William J. Hopkins 
Each large 12mo , cloth decorative , illustrated, per 
volume $1.50 

THE SANDMAN : His Farm Stories. 

“ Mathers and fathers and kind elder sisters who take 
the little ones to bed and rack their brains for stories will 
find this book a treasure.” — Cleveland Leader. 

THE SANDMAN : More Farm Stories. 

“ Children will call for these stories over and over 
again.” — Chicago Evening Post. 

THE SANDMAN: His Ship Stories. 

“ Little ones will understand and delight in the stories 
and their parents will read between the lines and recognize 
the poetic and artistic work of the author.” — Indianap- 
olis News. _ 

THE SANDMAN : His Sea Stories. 

“Once upon a time there was a man who knew little 
children and the kind of stories they liked, so he wrote 
four books of Sandman’s stories, all about the farm or 
the sea, and the brig Industry, and this book is one of 
them.” — Canadian Congregationalist. 

THE ALYS SERIES 

By Una MacDonald 

Each large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, per 
volume $1.50 

ALYS - ALL - ALONE 

“So real it touches the heart-strings.” — Springfield 
Union. 

ALYS IN HAPPYLAND 

“ One cannot read this book without feeling that its 
author intends that we may see and understand and feel 
more deeply, and, perhaps, more joyously.” — New York 
Observer. 

A— 13 


THE PAGE COMPANY’S 


THE BOYS’ STORY OF THE 
ARMY SERIES 

By Florence Kimball Russel 

BORN TO THE BLUE 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . . $1.25 

“ The story deserves warm commendation and genuine 
popularity.” — Army and Navy Register. 

IN WEST POINT GRAY 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . . $1.50 

“ The presentment of life in the famous military acad- 
emy whence so many heroes have graduated is realistic 
and enjoyable.” — New York Sun. 

FROM CHEVRONS TO SHOULDER- 
STRAPS 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . .$1.50 

In this book the reader again follows the experiences 
of Lieutenant Jack Stirling; this time during his junior 
and senior years at West Point. Mrs. Russel’s stories are 
full of reality and every page breathes the spirit and mili- 
tary atmosphere of West Point. 

THE BOYS OF THE 
REVOLUTION SERIES 

By John V. Lane 

Each large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, per 
volume . . . . . $1.50 

MARCHING WITH MORGAN; Or, How Don- 
ald Lovell Became a Soldier of the Revolution 
“ The tale is an excellent one for boys, portraying in a 
realistic manner the beginning of the great struggle for 
independence.” — Louisville Evening Post. 

RODNEY, THE RANGER; Or, With Daniel 

Morgan on Trail and Battlefield. 

“ A better book for boys has never left an American 
press.” — Springfield Union. 

A — 14 




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